


don’t know when it’ll explode

by zero_miles



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Miss Congeniality Fusion, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Slow Burn, Workplace Relationship, i think it deserves a slow burn tag at this point, implied/referenced PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-09 11:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zero_miles/pseuds/zero_miles
Summary: Taeil likes his job. Mostly. Except for when he's confined to a desk or forced to go undercover. So it just figures that when his team has no choice but to send in an agent undercover with a pop group to figure out who's making threats against an upcoming music festival, he's the only one who has a chance of pulling it off. (And not just because he's short, either.)aka: a Miss Congeniality AU of sorts.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> title from cherry bomb, because it's fitting.

“I’m going to kill you,” Taeil says through gritted teeth, glaring up at Jaehyun from where he’s sprawled on the floor.

Jaehyun shrugs unrepentantly, clearly not the least bit intimidated. “Consider this revenge for the air horn the last time I fell asleep at my desk. You’re lucky that all I did was kick your chair. Not my fault you startle easily and flung yourself to the ground,” he adds, snickering.

“That was Johnny, asshole,” Taeil groans, accepting the hand Jaehyun holds out to pull himself to his feet. “And he got the air horn from Yukhei. I wasn’t involved in that at all.”

Jaehyun frowns. “The water bottle last month?”

“Yuta. Come on, Jae.”

“What about —”

“I don’t even know what you’re thinking of now, but I can guarantee you I wasn’t involved,” Taeil sighs, sitting back down in his chair. “When have I ever been involved in that sort of thing?”

Jaehyun, at least, has the grace to look guilty. “Fuck. I’m sorry,” he says earnestly. “I’ll buy your lunch today?”

“You’d better,” Taeil grumbles, but he’s not that mad. Well, not anymore, at least – not having to spend money on a day he didn’t bother bringing his lunch always puts him in a decent mood.

“But hey, look at the bright side!” Jaehyun says, smiling that dimpled grin of his at Taeil. “At least I found you, and not Taeyong — well, no, it wouldn’t have been Taeyong, he’s been locked in his office yelling at whoever’s on the other line for like the last hour. At least it was me and not Kun. He would have been _disappointed_ in you.”

Honestly, Taeil falling asleep is kind of Kun’s fault, since he’d been the one to drop the world’s dullest investigative report on Taeil’s desk this morning with a sympathetic wince, like he’d known he was damning Taeil to hours of boredom. Taeil doesn’t say that, though. There are more pressing issues at hand right now, such as –

“Taeyong’s yelling at someone?” Taeil asks, unable to keep the shock out of his voice

Jaehyun nods, eyes wide. “I can’t hear what he’s saying because he’s also talking really _really_ fast, but he seems pretty agitated. Like, _someone got themselves shot_ angry, but that’s clearly not what’s happened because he’s still here, and Kun’s still here, and besides, the only people out in the field today are Sicheng and Jungwoo.” Jaehyun doesn’t add that they’d call for backup long before either of them had to draw their gun, leaving the odds of either of them getting shot when it’s just the two of them out at almost zero. He doesn’t have to.

Taeil glances down at his leg and just barely manages not to sigh. It hadn’t been his fault that he’d gotten shot last August; he’d honestly just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even Johnny, who tends to act like a dick where Taeil was concerned despite them being partners more often than not, had agreed, and the investigation into the incident had come to the same conclusion. A drug bust gone south in a hurry. That hadn’t kept the higher-ups from deciding that Taeil should be moved to desk work even after he’d passed a physical until a complete psych evaluation could be completed, to ensure he was mentally ready to get back out there, and then constantly moving back the scheduled date of the evaluation. It’s March, now, and at this point Taeil doesn’t think he’ll get his gun back until at least a year’s up. Even Taeyong and Kun’s combined efforts haven’t gotten them to budge, and he knows damn well how persuasive the two of them can be when it comes to things like this.

Taeyong’s office door swings open with a loud bang, causing Taeil to look up. He only gets a glimpse of him as he all but runs to Kun’s office on the opposite end of the floor, but he looks supremely agitated. His normally perfectly styled hair is a wreck, and he’s discarded his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.

“Whoa,” Taeil mutters under his breath. Jaehyun makes a noise of agreement.

“Like I said, he sounded _someone just got shot_ mad,” Jaehyun whispers, finally moving back to his own desk and leaving Taeil to his investigative report. Taeil doesn’t know if he’s grateful or annoyed to be left alone, honestly. Maybe a little of both.

Five minutes before noon, someone drops something on Taeil’s desk for the second time today. This time, though, it’s lunch courtesy of Jungwoo, who has an irritated look on his normally serene face as he waits for Taeil to close the file he’d been half-heartedly reading and lock down his computer.

“Jaehyun was supposed to buy me lunch today, but I’m sure I’ll like whatever you brought me a lot better,” Taeil tells him as he stands up to follow Jungwoo to the break room. It has the intended effect; Jungwoo grins, the irritation leaving his face temporarily.

“You mean you didn’t want a hot dog from the cart around the corner?” Jungwoo teases.

Taeil groans. “Don’t ruin my appetite, please.”

“Is whatever he did bad enough that you can guilt trip him into bringing you a lunch from home?”

Jaehyun, despite all appearances, is an amazing cook, likely because he'd figured out at some point that cooking for himself was a lot cheaper than ordering takeout every night. There’d nearly been a fist fight over the last serving of the dish he’d brought to their Christmas potluck, even though several others were barely touched.

(Taeil would never admit it, but he was a bit disappointed that Yukhei had stepped in before Johnny and Yuta had actually started throwing punches. Johnny either would have kicked Yuta’s ass and looked good doing it, or gotten his ass handed to him by Yuta. Either outcome would have made Taeil’s day. Week. Month, even.)

“Think so,” Taeil replies, sitting down and stretching his arms above his head. The break room is oddly deserted. There’s usually a line for the microwave by now, but he and Jungwoo are the only people in the room.

Jungwoo notices Taeil glancing around the room and shrugs. “Taeyong’s still in Kun’s office, and when we got back Yuta and Xuxi met Sicheng outside. I think they went to the sushi place around the corner. I can’t tell you where Johnny or Jae are, although I assume they went somewhere together like normal.”

Taeil hums, pulling out his phone to shoot Jaehyun a quick _Zeus bought me lunch, don’t bother today_ text. “Did you finish your interview?”

Jungwoo groans loudly, and when Taeil looks up, the irritated look on his face is back. “Finish the interview…? No. No, we had literally just parked the car when Kun called us and told us to get our asses back to HQ for an all-hands after lunch.”

“That’s more information than we got,” Taeil tells him, shrugging. “Jae told me Taeyong was yelling at someone on the phone, and then we saw him run to Kun’s office. He looked…” _the way he did after I was shot_ , Taeil thinks. “Like a wreck,” he says.

“Sicheng says Kun sounded upset, like something was really bothering him,” Jungwoo offers with a wince. “So I have a bad feeling about this,” he adds, and Taeil can’t help but agree.

 

***

 

Taeyong calls for an all hands at one pm sharp like Jungwoo said he would, and he looks even more worn out than he had that morning once everyone’s gathered in the conference room. Kun looks worried too, although less visibly so than Taeyong.

“Have any of you heard about the big music festival that’s scheduled to happen about two months from now?” Taeyong starts, pacing back and forth at the head of the conference table.

“Which one?” Johnny asks, not even bothering to look up from where he’s examining his fingernails, for some reason. Taeil grits his teeth and shifts his body so that he’s completely facing Taeyong at the head of the table, rather than Johnny across from him.

“I don’t have time for any bullshit today, Seo,” Taeyong says sharply, then exhales loudly. “Sorry, sorry. It’s been a rough day, and I’m not trying to take it out on anyone,” he adds.

That’s why Taeyong’s a good boss -- he’s not afraid to call them out on their shit, but only when the situation actually calls for it. As aggravating as Johnny can be, it was a genuine question.

Probably.

“No worries,” Johnny says, looking up. He makes eye contact with Taeil and smiles sheepishly.

Taeil looks away.

“— the first weekend in June,” Taeyong’s saying, when Taeil turns his attention back to him. “They’ve had two credible threats that seem connected, and we’ve been told to drop everything else we’re working on to investigate.”

“Why us?” Yuta asks.

Taeyong wrinkles his nose. “Couldn’t tell you,” he says quickly. Too quickly. Taeil instantly knows he’s lying. “I know it sucks to have to put everything else aside for a while, but hopefully we’ll be able to get this one taken care of quickly if we’re all working together as a team.”

“Is that why you were yelling earlier?” Jaehyun asks. “Because we have to drop everything like nothing we were doing before even matters?” There’s a loud _thump_ immediately following his words that sounds an awful lot like someone just kicked him underneath the table. Yuta, probably.

“I told you, it’s been a rough day for me,” Taeyong says defensively. “I mean, yes. Kind of. That’s not the only reason,” he says, looking over at Kun.

“We managed to get Taeil’s psych eval scheduled for tomorrow,” Kun adds. “That was probably the yelling you heard, Jae.”

“Seriously?” Taeil asks disbelievingly.

Taeyong nods. “They can’t expect us to take on a case of this magnitude when one of my agents can’t even go into the field!” he says loudly, throwing his hands into the air. “It’s been bad enough that they’ve been putting it off for months,” he continued, voice rising steadily higher, “but --”

“We got it taken care of, finally, is what Taeyong is trying to say,” Kun cuts in smoothly.

Maybe it’s because he knows both Taeyong and Kun pretty well at this point, but Taeil’s certain there’s something else going on behind the scenes that they’re not talking about. He’d bet his entire paycheck that Taeyong lied multiple times during the debrief, not just when he said he didn’t know why this particular investigation was assigned to their office.

Once they’re dismissed and sent back to their desks, Taeil’s caught off guard when Johnny pulls him aside. “Taeyong lied to us,” he says quietly.

“I know,” Taeil tells him.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

Taeil shrugs. “No,” he says honestly. “He wouldn’t lie unless he had a reason, and it’s clearly something we don’t need to know about. If that changes I’m sure he’ll tell us. I trust him.”

Johnny exhales. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

Johnny pats him on the shoulder. “Good luck tomorrow,” he says, ignoring the question. He flashes a brief grin in Taeil’s direction before walking away, and all Taeil can think is that he wishes Johnny would smile like that more often. He shakes his head, more at himself than anything else, before following Johnny back to their desks.

 

***

 

A week later, no progress has been made. None. Unless you count Taeil passing his psych eval with flying colors, which he doesn’t, since he could have done that in November. Even Kun is beginning to look visibly stressed at all times. It’s unsettling.

“At this rate, we’re gonna have to send someone in undercover the week of the festival,” Taeil mutters to himself, barely resisting the urge to snap the pencil he’s holding in half.

“What was that?” Johnny asks, poking his head over the top of the cubicle.

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Johnny says, but he backs off, shrugging and sitting back down without another word

Later, Taeil will realize that Johnny backed down a little too quickly, but right now he’s just glad to be left alone; he’s got a stress headache forming right behind his left eye and talking to anyone would just make it worse.

It’s at their daily debriefing that Taeil realizes what happened; Taeyong asks tiredly if anyone has anything new, clearly expecting the same chorus of _no, not today_ he’d gotten every other day, but this time Johnny practically jumps out of his seat and says that he has a brilliant idea, would Taeyong like to hear it?

Which might be the stupidest question Taeil has ever heard anyone ask in this office, and last month he heard Yukhei wondering out loud why meteors always landed in craters. Of course Taeyong would like to hear. They desperately need to make some progress in this godforsaken investigation.

“We send someone in undercover the week of the festival,” Johnny says after Taeyong tells him to present his idea, sounding smug.

“Hey!” Taeil protests weakly, but he’s ignored.

Taeyong gives Johnny a considering look. “What did you have in mind?”

Johnny’s eyes are bright as he leans forward, practically across the conference table. “Is there a way we could get someone in with one of the groups scheduled to perform? Like as an assistant or a manager or something? That way we’d be in the middle of things, since the only thing we’ve figured out so far is that whoever’s making the threats is connected to the festival.”

“That’s not an awful idea,” Taeyong says after a moment, turning to look at Kun. The room falls completely silent as Taeyong and Kun seem to have some sort of unspoken conversation, one that ends with Kun scowling and pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he says, gathering up the stack of papers laid out in front of him. “I’m going home.”

“It’s barely two o’clock?” Yuta says.

“I’m going home,” Kun repeats, sharp. “I might see you guys tomorrow, but probably not,” he adds as he leaves, Taeyong hot on his heels. A door slams in the distance.

There’s an awkward silence following their departure where everyone just looks at each other before Yukhei finally says, “That was weird, right?”

“I have literally never seen Kun that pissed before,” Sicheng says dryly. “Or like, pissed at all. So, yeah, it was weird.”

“I wonder what the fuck just happened,” Yukhei sighs.

“I’m sure we’ll find out eventually,” Jungwoo says placatingly. “We always do.”

 

***

 

Jungwoo’s right, of course.

True to his word, Kun doesn’t show up the next day, or even the day after that. He finally reappears after lunch Friday afternoon, and heads straight for Taeyong’s office. He closes the door behind himself – slams it closed, really – but not before an unusually loud _you’re an asshole, you know that?_ filters out into the main area.

No one even pretends to be doing any work after that.

Jaehyun’s desk is closest to Taeyong’s office, so it’s no surprise that everyone ends up drifting in that direction. There’s no yelling today, but they can hear bits and pieces of the conversation.

“Are they using code names?” Yuta whispers after they hear yet another reference to someone Kun keeps calling Ten.

“Makes sense, if they need to protect a civilian’s identity,” Taeil whispers back. Yuta nods thoughtfully.

“That’s the most obvious code name I’ve ever heard of, though,” he says. “You’d think Kun of all people would realize that.”

“Cut him a break, he’s stressed out,” Sicheng tells Yuta, sounding defensive. Yuta raises his hands placatingly and mutters an apology, one that Sicheng seemingly accepts if the way he pats Yuta’s hair is any indication.

“Is he still mad, though?” Johnny asks Sicheng, who frowns, but like, thoughtfully.

“I really don’t know. He’s been completely off the map the last few days. He hasn’t replied to any of my texts since he left on Tuesday.”

“Weird,” Jungwoo says. And it is. Kun never ignores texts or emails. Ever. He’d once emailed Taeil back at 2:30 in the morning on a Sunday. When he was in the hospital.

“Okay, but seriously,” Jaehyun says. “I —” He’s cut off by the door to Taeyong’s office swinging open; Taeil’s not sure what it says about them that neither Taeyong nor Kun look surprised to see their subordinates gathered around Jaehyun’s desk.

“It’s like you knew I was going to call an all hands,” Taeyong says, raising an eyebrow at them.

Yukhei laughs awkwardly. “Yes, we did, we were definitely just waiting for you guys to come out, nothing else,” he says, completely unnecessarily. He opens his mouth again, but Jungwoo stomps on his foot before he can say anything else with a hissed _shut the fuck up, Xuxi_. Yukhei shoots him a grateful look.

“Whatever,” Kun says, exhaling loudly. “Do you guys want to do this here, or do you want to go to the conference room where we can all sit down and pretend that we’re all mature adults who don’t eavesdrop on private conversations like children?”

So Kun’s still pissed, then.

It feels like Taeil’s been spending more time in the conference room than at his own desk lately, but he’s not dumb enough to say that right now. Not with the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife following Kun’s completely out of character outburst. Everyone’s unusually quiet as they settle into the conference room, as if no one dares to speak out of turn.

When he finally realizes no one’s going to say anything, not even Taeyong, Kun sighs and says, “I’m not going to apologize for leaving like I did the other day, or for not coming in the last few days, but I am sorry for snapping at you all a few minutes ago. This investigation is...well, it’s starting to hit a little too close to home for me, and it’s stressful. Stressful in ways I never imagined possible, and it’s exhausting. That doesn’t mean I should take it out on you, though.”

The atmosphere in the room changes instantly, the tension deflating like a popped balloon.

“We’re all human, we get it,” Jungwoo says gently. “Are you okay?”

Kun smiles at him, but it kinda looks like a grimace. “I will be, hopefully,” he says, and it’s not an answer but no one pushes it. “Taeyong?” he says after a moment of silence.

Taeyong jumps a little. “Right!” he says. “Okay. Johnny, your idea of sending someone in undercover with one of the groups who will be attending the festival was a really good one. We, ah, have a connection with one of the groups, and we’ve been looking into it, but unfortunately I’m not sure we’ll be able to pull it off.”

Johnny honest to god pouts, which is ridiculous considering it _wasn’t even his idea_. Taeil has to look away before he makes a snarky comment. “Why?” Johnny asks.

“Have you guys ever heard of Dream?” Taeyong asks.

“Dream?” Yukhei shouts. “Dream will be at the festival?”

“Yes?” Taeyong says, sounding confused. “We’ve been over this?”

Yukhei shakes his head. “No,” he insists, “I wouldn’t have forgotten about Dream being at the festival! Oh my god! We can’t let anything happen to them.”

“That’s the plan,” Yuta says dryly.

“They’re just kids!” Yukhei continues. “Babies!”

Taeil sneaks a glance at Kun; he looks oddly pale, and his lips are pressed into a thin line.

“They aren’t babies, Yukhei,” Taeyong says quickly, diverting Taeil’s attention back to him. “And we won’t let anything happen to them, or to anyone else who works with them. Or any of the other groups who will be performing at the festival, either,” Taeyong adds, almost as an afterthought.

That’s...oddly specific, Taeil thinks.

“That’s oddly specific,” Jaehyun says.

“ _Anyways_ ,” Taeyong says, completely ignoring Jaehyun, “we have a connection with Dream, and have spent the last couple of days seeing if it was possible to send one of you undercover with them. But the only option that their management is willing to consider is having someone pose as a member of the band, which obviously wouldn’t work out —”

“I can do it!” Yukhei says.

“No,” Kun says flatly, the first thing he’s said since his apology. “Not a chance.”

“You would stick out like a sore thumb, Yukhei,” Taeyong adds, not unkindly.

“Taeil could do it,” Johnny says, and the universe comes to a screeching halt.

“What the fuck,” Taeil says, much more calmly than he feels.

Yuta snickers. “You are the right height,” he says. Sicheng, sitting between them, seems to sense Taeil’s rage or something because he places a placating hand on Taeil’s arm before he can do something stupid, like jump out of his chair to put Yuta in a chokehold.

“Not now,” Sicheng says softly. Taeil sighs, deflating.

“Your guardian angel just saved your ass, Nakamoto,” Taeil says. Yuta shrugs, completely unconcerned.

“Guys!” Johnny yells. “Hear me out, please?”

Taeyong glances down at his watch. “You have one minute to make your case.”

“What the fuck,” Taeil says again. “There’s no case to be made here.” He’s ignored this time, though, everyone focused on Johnny.

“No offense, Taeil, but Yuta’s right, you’re the right height,” Johnny tells him, making an apologetic face. “I think you’re shorter than most of those kids are. You look really young when you’re not wearing your grandpa clothes, and you’re athletic enough that you could totally learn to dance if you had to.”

“Thirty seconds, and I’m not convinced yet,” Taeyong warns.

Johnny visibly falters. “I’m sure learning how to lip sync isn’t hard?” he offers.

Next to him, Sicheng scoffs. “Taeil wouldn’t need to learn how to lip sync,” he says dismissively, and – oh. Oh, no. Sicheng just sealed his fate, and they both know it.

Taeil buries his head in his hands as Taeyong says, “And why is that?” in a deadly calm voice that usually means nothing but trouble. “Taeil?” he adds, leaving Taeil no choice but to tell the truth.

“I had the opportunity to become a trainee, but went to college instead,” Taeil says through his hands. It’s mumbled, but he knows everyone heard him based on the unnatural quiet that falls over the room at his words.

“Seriously?” Yukhei asks.

“He has the voice of an angel,” Sicheng says. “I heard him sing a Celine Dion song once when he was drunk and it was still flawless.”

Yuta gasps. “You never told me that was Taeil!” he says accusingly.

“I didn’t know you didn’t remember it was him!” Sicheng retorts.

Taeyong whistles sharply before Yuta and Sicheng’s squabbling can devolve into a petty argument. “Apparently Taeil could go undercover as a member of a kpop group, then,” he says wryly.

“Apparently,” Kun echoes.

“Told you,” Johnny says smugly. Taeil looks up at that, just so he can send Johnny a glare across the table. Judging by how Johnny shrinks back in his seat some, it must be an effective one.

“I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do though, Taeil,” Taeyong continues, sounding sympathetic. Taeil’s dislike of undercover work isn’t a secret, after all.

“I need a minute,” Taeil says, standing up abruptly. “Excuse me,” he adds, for appearance’s sake more than anything. He knows how rude he’s being. He just doesn’t care.

 

***

 

Taeil’s not surprised that someone follows him. He is, however, a little surprised that it’s Johnny who puts a hand on his arm before he can press the button for the elevator.

“Wait,” Johnny says.

Taeil shakes his head, not even bothering to turn around and spare Johnny a glance. “No. I need a minute to myself, and I need some air,” he snaps, shaking Johnny’s arm off to jab at the down button.

Johnny misses the hint – no, he ignores it, probably, Johnny’s a lot of things but stupid and unobservant aren’t among them – and follows Taeil into the elevator and through the lobby. He’s silent, minus a murmured _this way_ when Taeil turns towards the parking garage next to their building out of habit. It’s smart; the cameras in the garage are equipped with audio, and they’re not the only agency in this building. Any conversation they might have isn’t one that the security guards need to hear.

When Johnny hesitantly takes him by the arm again, Taeil doesn’t shove him off. Instead, he allows Johnny to lead him to the small park a block away that mostly functions as a spot for government employees like themselves to spend their lunch breaks on nice days and is therefore deserted.

 “What’s going through your mind right now, Taeil?” Johnny asks gently, once they’ve sat down on the bench furthest away from the entrance. He’s patient while Taeil struggles to put his thoughts into words, and Taeil’s grateful.

Taeil opens his mouth, intending to say something like _I don’t know_ or _this is ridiculous_ , but a garbled scream of frustration comes out instead, causing Johnny to huff out a quiet laugh.

“When I said I needed a minute, I needed it to think this all through,” Taeil says sullenly.

Johnny shrugs, the movement jostling Taeil where they’re pressed closer together than they really need to be, considering the size of the bench. “We can talk about something else then,” he says agreeably.

“Such as?” Taeil asks warily. He turns to look at Johnny, who has a shit eating grin on his face.

“Celine Dion? Really?”

Taeil groans, feeling his face heat up. “That cannot be held against me. I was drunk – you know drinking with Sicheng and Yuta is a bad idea – and Sicheng can be very convincing when he wants to be,” he whines. “We weren’t even at a karaoke bar. The shitty band stopped playing and then suddenly one of the bartenders was waving around a sign-up sheet and Sicheng put my name down. He even picked the stupid song. I think he was trying to embarrass me – stop laughing, asshole,” he protests.

Johnny waves an arm in the air dismissively. “I’m sorry, but this is hilarious,” he chokes out. “Let me guess, Sicheng picked the bar?”

“Yes,” Taeil replies, crossing his arms against his chest and barely resisting the urge to pout. He’s a grown man, and a government law enforcement official at that. Pouting is beneath him. At least in public. “And yes, I know he was setting me up for something, no, I still haven’t figured out why and this was six months ago, and no, I don’t know if he has a video. I suspect not if Yuta didn’t remember it was me singing and not some other random person at the bar. Do we have to keep talking about this?”

“That depends on you,” Johnny says, suddenly serious. “This seems like pretty simple undercover work. Why are you so…uh,” he trails off when Taeil shifts so that he can raise an eyebrow at him.

“Want to rephrase that?” Taeil asks dangerously. He doesn’t miss how Johnny sucks in a deep breath and looks down at his feet immediately; it’s nice to remind himself sometimes that he does possess the ability to be intimidating when he wants to be, even if he is a bit on the shorter side (or tiny, according to most of his co-workers).

When Johnny looks back up, there’s a slight blush on his face. “Tell me what you’re thinking?” he tries, which is much better.

“Something doesn’t feel right about this.” When Johnny remains silent, clearly waiting for him to continue, Taeil sighs and says, “They’re obviously not telling us everything. Like, there’s obviously a reason why we’re running this investigation and not the main office – this could turn into a high-profile event, and they want nine people to handle it?”

“We established that almost two weeks ago, though,” Johnny reminds him.

“That was last week, and this week has been really weird,” Taeil argues. “Yukhei’s right, they never specifically mentioned to us that Dream would be at the festival, and they’re a big enough group that you’d think that would be important information for us to know. And then Kun – Johnny, did you see his face when Yukhei and Taeyong were talking about them? Dream? He looked _scared_.”

Taeil’s looking at Johnny still, so he sees the exact moment that understanding flashes across his face. “I didn’t see his face, but I trust your instincts when it comes to reading people. It’s never led me wrong before – don’t start,” he warns, glancing down at Taeil’s leg so quickly that Taeil would have missed it had he not been paying close attention. “It’s never led me wrong before, so if you say Kun looked scared, then I believe you. But that makes things make sense, doesn’t it?”

That’s another reason why they work well together as partners when they have a common goal – Taeil notices all the little things, and Johnny’s biggest strength is putting all the pieces together in a way that makes sense on the fly.

“Not to me,” Taeil admits. “Tell me.”

“I suggested sending someone in undercover --”

“You mean, you stole my idea –”

“— and Kun and Taeyong had a silent conversation that ended with Kun leaving for three days. He comes back, and he’s pissed, because it’s getting personal for him? Then we find out that either he or Taeyong have a connection to a group scheduled to perform, and he looked scared while talking about that group?”

“Oh,” Taeil breathes out, as it all clicks. “This is fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Johnny agrees.

“I still don’t know what to do,” Taeil admits. “I hate undercover work, and you know it. Everyone knows it. I’m terrible at it. And I don’t think you or God or anyone else could blame me for feeling hesitant about this, because I clearly only have half of the facts here. I don’t know what exactly I would be getting myself into. It could be nothing, or it could be some serious shit.”

“Do you remember what you said to me, when we first found out about this investigation? That they’d only keep something from us if it was important but you trusted them? If that’s still true, I think you know what you need to do.”

 

***

 

“I’ll do it,” Taeil tells Kun, before he clocks out and heads home for the weekend. “Go undercover, I mean. If you guys are serious about wanting me to do it.”

“If you’re willing to do it, then we’re serious. Thank you,” Kun says earnestly, and Taeil knows he’s not imagining the look of relief on Kun’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i watched miss congeniality the day after the video of 127 dancing to chewing gum was posted, and i've been working on this ever since. 
> 
> right now i'm thinking this will be 4 or 5 chapters, but that's a rough estimate and this is definitely subject to change.
> 
> next chapter: we meet the rest of nct!


	2. Two

Taeil doesn’t even make it to his desk on Monday morning before Taeyong appears seemingly out of nowhere and stops him.

“You’re late,” Taeyong hisses. “Since when are you late? You’re never late.”

Taeil blinks, once, twice, and then glances down at his watch in confusion. “It’s just past eight thirty, and I don’t have to be here until nine,” he says, slowly. “No one else is here, either.”

“I’m here!” Yuta yells from his desk.

“You don’t count!” Taeil yells back. Yuta’s always there first, because he somehow manages to get up before the sun each day without an alarm clock. Even when he’s been drinking. It’s honestly vaguely unsettling.

Taeyong presses his hand to his forehead and scowls. “I was wondering why it was so quiet,” he mutters. “Alright. Sorry, Taeil.”

“Is everything okay?” Taeil asks hesitantly. He probably deserves the glare Taeyong sends his way. It’s a fairly effective one too, considering the man looks like a kitten half the time. Taeil’s almost intimidated. Probably would be actually intimidated if he didn’t know Taeyong so well.

“I’m going to lose my hair from stress,” Taeyong informs him.

“From stress? Or from all of the hair dye?” Yuta asks innocently. Taeyong makes a strangled noise and stalks over towards Yuta, and – Taeil’s not a coward, obviously, but he stages a tactical retreat anyways.

Kun looks up from his desk and smiles when Taeil knocks on the doorframe of his office gently enough that it could have been ignored, had Kun wanted to do so. “Good morning,” he says, then pauses as a scream comes from the direction of Yuta’s desk. “Do I want to know about that?”

“Absolutely not,” Taeil answers, sitting down in one of the chairs across from Kun’s desk. He looks a lot more relaxed than he had when Taeil had last seen him on Friday. Hopefully he’d actually used the weekend to take a break and decompress from work for once in his life.

Kun just shrugs, even as a shout that sound suspiciously like Jaehyun filters in. “Okay. What’s up?” he asks, setting aside the pen he’d been holding.

It’s Taeil’s turn to shrug, now. “Why was Taeyong convinced I was late and pissed about it? And am I actually going to have to act like a member of Dream when I go undercover?”

“Hopefully, no, but we have to be prepared for that to happen,” Kun answers, completely ignoring the first part of Taeil’s line of questioning. “You’ll have to train with them just in case you do have to go on stage with them at the festival.”

“You do know this could be a disaster, right?”

“I’m not concerned. You’ve never had an issue passing your physical tests, so you shouldn’t have a problem learning a couple of dance routines. And based on a video I saw over the weekend, singing will be the least of your concerns,” Kun adds, a grin spreading across his face.

Taeil clears his throat and sits up straighter in the chair. “Just out of curiosity, what would happen if I murdered Sicheng?”

Kun outright laughs at that. “Considering what I had to do to get the video, I don’t think you have to worry about him showing it to anyone else,” he says, mysteriously.

“I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”

“Yuta will cry. And potentially murder you in your sleep.”

“Yuta is probably dead too,” Taeil points out.

“He isn’t dead. At least, not _yet_ ,” Taeyong says from the doorway. “I hate to interrupt, but Kun, you have an urgent call on hold you need to take. Now.”

“Is it –”

“Yes,” Taeyong interrupts. “Like I said, you need to take it.”

Kun sighs a little, but he also smiles. It’s a little strange, because urgent calls aren’t usually something pleasant. “Sorry about this, Taeil. We can continue our conversation later, though?”

“Sure,” Taeil agrees, standing up. He allows Taeyong to usher him out of Kun’s office and close the door securely behind them without complaint, because he figures Taeyong might still be a little on edge. His hair is a mess, Taeil notices, but besides that he looks mostly unbothered from whatever had gone down with Yuta.

“Did Kun tell you that you’ll likely start training with Dream by the end of this week?” Taeyong asks him.

“We didn’t get quite that far,” Taeil tells him. “What was that all about, anyways? Why did Kun look happy about having an urgent phone call? Those aren’t fun. Ever.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Taeyong says imperiously. He’s full of shit, and they both know it, so Taeil doesn’t even feel bad about rolling his eyes like a teenager.

When he turns to go back to his desk, though, Taeyong stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “If I were you, I’d go get some coffee or something. I have a feeling you’re gonna need it.”

Well, that’s not foreboding or anything, but Taeil bypasses his desk in favor of going downstairs to hit up the small café on the ground floor anyways. He’s found that listening to Taeyong’s cryptic warnings usually pays off in the long run.

 

***

 

An hour later, when Taeil’s drained his coffee and is contemplating lobbing the empty cup at Yukhei’s head in the hopes that it might get him to shut the hell up, he hears the unmistakable sounds of someone shouting filtering through the office for the second time that day. It’s not even ten o’clock yet.

“Who’s that?” Johnny asks, head popping up over his cubicle. There’s a small furrow between his eyebrows, and Taeil kind of wants to reach out and touch it.

“Doesn’t sound like anyone who works here,” Jungwoo says, and he’s right, it doesn’t. It also seems to be coming from the small lobby leading to the rarely used public entrance.

Sure enough, their receptionist appears a moment later, looking harried. “Is Taeyong in his office?” she asks.

“He’s on a conference call,” Jaehyun tells her, sounding apologetic. “I think Kun’s available, though. Or I can go talk to whoever it is?”

She nods quickly, looking relieved. “Would you go try to calm him down while I see if Kun can meet with him?”

“Of course,” Jaehyun says, standing up.

“What the fuck is going on?” Taeil hears Johnny say quietly. It’s punctuated by more shouting from the lobby, and if this is what Taeyong meant by _interesting_ , then Taeil’s really starting to regret getting out of bed this morning.

“Should I go out there and see if I can help, too?” Yukhei asks.

“No!” Jungwoo and Yuta shout simultaneously.

“Sit your ass back down, Yukhei,” Yuta adds.

“You guys never let me talk to people,” Yukhei says. Taeil can’t see him, but he’s dead certain Yukhei’s pouting. He’s not entirely wrong, but it’s not like they don’t have their reasons.

Kun steps out of his office at the same time Jaehyun leads a tall man with dark hair back. The man looks spitting angry, but Kun relaxes when he sees who it is.

“Oh, Doyoung,” he says.

“Doyoung,” Jaehyun repeats, sounding starstruck.

“You!” Doyoung snarls, pointing a finger at Kun. “What the fuck kind of game are you trying to play?”

Kun’s eyebrows shoot up, almost into his hairline. “I am _trying_ to keep you all safe,” he says, incredulously, voice steadily rising in volume with every word that comes out of his mouth. “Which you would have known, had you not ignored my calls over the weekend!”

Doyoung looks slightly taken aback. Apparently he knows Kun well enough to be surprised when the man yells, which is interesting. “You know I don’t answer unlisted numbers!” he says defensively.

Kun rolls his eyes. “I didn’t – you know what, never mind. Come into my office, so we can talk about this without making an even bigger scene, please,” he sighs. “Jaehyun, go back to your desk,” he adds, when Jaehyun tries to follow.

Instead of going back to his own desk, Jaehyun sits on Sicheng’s desk, which is closest to the hallway leading to the lobby. “Wow,” he breathes out.

“Who was that?” Johnny asks, standing up. Taeil mentally sighs and gives up on getting any work done until either Kun or Taeyong tell them to get back to work; if Johnny’s leaving his desk for the gossip, then everyone else is sure to follow.

“The love of my life,” Jaehyun replies instantly.

“Jae, be serious,” Johnny admonishes him.

“I am!” Jaehyun protests. “Did you see him? Did you _see_ the passion in his eyes? He told me I could either bring him to see Kun or I could go fuck myself, and I almost blacked out.”

Right when Taeil’s about to accept defeat and roll his chair over to Sicheng’s desk to join in the mockery of Jaehyun that’s surely about to begin, Kun’s door swings open. “Taeil?” he calls.

“Yes?”

“Come join us, please.”

Taeil feels an awful lot like a kid on the way to the principal’s office as he walks over to where Kun’s standing in his doorway. Everyone else is standing up, either at Sicheng’s desk or on their way there, and staring at him.

(Jaehyun, he notices, has the dumbest expression on his face that Taeil’s ever seen on a human being – he looks kind of like he just got hit upside the head with a crowbar, but liked it anyways.)

“Him? Really?” Doyoung says critically the second Kun closes the door behind them, clearly giving Taeil a once over. Taeil doesn’t even know what exactly the man’s referring to, exactly, but he feels offended anyways.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Taeil asks, sitting down in the unoccupied seat next to him.

“Guys –” Kun says, at the exact same time Doyoung says, “I think you know exactly what it’s supposed to mean.”

Taeil takes a deep breath, ready to give this person who showed up in their office with a bad attitude way too early on a Monday morning a piece of his mind – but before he can, Kun drops something heavy on his desk, startling them both. “Cut the bullshit, or else,” he warns, sounding kind of cold. Taeil doesn’t think it’s for his benefit.

“I hate it when you pull your scary motherfucker voice on me,” Doyoung mutters.

“You know him?” Taeil says to Kun. It’s not a question, more of confirming what he’s already sure of at this point, but Kun sighs and shakes his head anyways.

“Unfortunately,” Kun replies. “Taeil, this is Kim Dongyoung, but you can call him Doyoung. Everyone else does. He’s the main manager of Dream, so you’ll be working closely with him over the next few weeks.”

“So is he…your connection?” Taeil tries, realizing that it’s not quite right as the words leave his mouth. Doyoung implied that he hadn’t had any idea that someone might be sent in undercover over the weekend, so he probably found out this morning. There’s no way that Kun’s mysterious connection has been kept in the dark. Taeil’s sure of it.

Taeil’s proven right when Doyoung barks out a laugh. “He doesn’t know?” he says to Kun.

“No,” Kun says, so forcefully that Taeil’s taken aback.

Doyoung doesn’t seem fazed, though, turning to Taeil and saying, “I’m not his connection, no. We have a, ah, mutual friend.”

“Sure, you can call him that,” Kun agrees.

“Unlike Kun, though, I’m not in the business of keeping secrets from people I trust and who I expect to trust me in return,” Doyoung continues. “If you want me to cooperate with this, you need to keep me in the know, so I don’t have anything like this sprung on me first thing in the morning again. Jesus Christ, Kun, I almost had a fucking heart attack when Ten told me.”

 _Ten_ sounds familiar, but before Taeil can remember where he’s heard that name before, Kun snorts gracelessly, capturing Taeil’s attention. It’s probably the most immature noise that Taeil’s ever heard the man make.

“If you had answered your phone this weekend, that wouldn’t have happened,” Kun says again.

Doyoung shrugs. “Whatever. We’re also not lying to the kids. They’re more than old enough to understand what’s going on, and they’ll see through any lie you tell me to feed them about why a new member who doesn’t know how to sing or dance is joining them for one festival and one festival only.”

Taeil expects Kun to protest – isn’t the point of going undercover to have as few people as possible know? It’s the understatement of the decade to say that he’s shocked, then, when Kun hums in agreement and then hands Doyoung his phone.

“Oh, what the hell,” Taeil almost shouts when the all too familiar sounds of Sicheng’s laughter comes from the tinny speaker, followed by the opening chords of _My Heart Will Go On_. “Kun. What are you doing?”

“What needs to be done,” Kun answers. His tone books no argument, so Taeil shuts up and suffers in silence.

Almost five excruciating minutes later, Doyoung looks up and passes the phone back to Kun. He’s grinning, and it transforms his face into something radiant. “I guess you can sing, huh,” he says to Taeil, grin staying firmly in place. “Alright, then. We can work with everything else, because I assume you have to be light on your feet to be allowed to go out and do…whatever it is that you guys do. You need a haircut for sure.”

“I like my hair,” Taeil says defensively. It’s kind of long, yeah, but he doesn’t think he looks terrible or anything.

“Suck it up, buttercup,” Doyoung replies, sounding so cheerful that it’s a little scary. “I think I’m done here for now. Kun, you wanna walk me out? I think the kid with the dimples might try to attach himself to my leg if I don’t have a bodyguard.”

Kun shoots Taeil a look that clearly says _what is he talking about_? Taeil shrugs and rolls his eyes, hoping that it manages to encompass everything that is Jung Jaehyun. It might work, because Kun huffs out a breath before standing up to walk Doyoung out as requested. Or he might just be being polite. It’s impossible to tell.

“Oh, one more thing,” Doyoung says, when Taeil’s got his hand on the door handle to leave. “I’ll see you Wednesday at eleven at our practice studios, so I can introduce to you the kids and figure out a rehearsal schedule. You should bring someone with you, though. You know. If you want. You might find it useful.”

“Someone? Like Jaehyun?” Taeil snarks, the words leaving his mouth before he even has a chance to think through what he’s about to say. He’s on target, though, if the way Doyoung blushes slightly is any indication.

 

***

 

Taeil finds himself standing outside a rather upscale building downtown at 10:45 Wednesday morning, Jaehyun at his side. He’d mentioned offhandedly yesterday afternoon (after clearing it with Taeyong, of course) that Doyoung had mentioned he should bring someone with him, just to see how Jaehyun would react.

Jaehyun hadn’t disappointed, quickly bribing everyone else with the promise of homemade cookies of their choosing if they let him go with Taeil. He’s pretty sure that Johnny and Yuta had then spent the next hour googling the most complicated cookie recipes they could find to screw with Jaehyun a little, but they’d both refused to confirm or deny.

(Johnny had winked at him, though, when Taeil asked him about it. The warmth that had hit him low in the gut afterwards is yet another thing involving Johnny Seo that Taeil has promised himself not to dwell on, not even late at night when he can’t sleep.)

“I feel a little intimidated,” Jaehyun says, clutching the container of what he’d informed Taeil this morning were double chocolate slutty brownies, whatever that was supposed to mean. He’d slapped Sicheng across the hands with a ruler he pulled out of nowhere when he tried to sneak one, though, so Taeil’s pretty sure that they’re meant for Doyoung.

“How do you think I feel right now?” Taeil asks.

Jaehyun nudges him with his shoulder. “You should feel confident, because you’re kind of a badass sometimes,” he says cheerfully, the hesitation that had been clear in his voice a moment before completely gone.

“Kind of? Sometimes?” Taeil echoes. “Fuck you, I’m always a badass.”

Jaehyun pats him on the shoulder. It feels rather condescending. “Sure you are, buddy. Well, let’s go in. I want to see Doyoung again.”

“You saw him one time for less than five minutes, and he spent nearly all of it yelling at you,” Taeil points out, following Jaehyun through the large glass doors.

“And that was long enough for me to know I want to see his face every day for the rest of my life – oh,” Jaehyun says, coming to an abrupt stop.

Taeil nearly crashes into his back, but his reflexes kick in just fast enough that he’s able to side step him. He follows Jaehyun’s gaze and sees Doyoung leaning against the front desk, arms crossed in front of him, looking bored.

“Hi,” Jaehyun breathes out. Doyoung nods curtly at him.

“Hello, man whose name I didn’t catch,” he answers.

“I told you his name?” Taeil says. Doyoung doesn’t even spare him a glance.

“I’m Jaehyun,” Jaehyun says, taking a step forward. “Thank you for telling Taeil he could bring me along today. It should be interesting.”

Doyoung raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t tell him to bring you specifically,” he sniffs.

Taeil snorts and says, “Are you kidding me? You pretty much did.”

“Wait, seriously?” Jaehyun hisses to Taeil, sounding betrayed.

“Anyways,” Doyoung says, pushing himself off the desk, “follow me, please. I’ll bring you upstairs to meet the kids and maybe get started, depending on how they react to you.” Jaehyun makes a strangled noise low in his throat when Doyoung turns around so that his back is to them, and Taeil’s already done with them.

“I love a man who plays hard to get,” Jaehyun whispers conspiratorially. Taeil can’t help his shudder; that is more information than he ever needed to know.

“I’m coming alone from now on,” Taeil informs him.

“Taeyong says someone needs to come with you whenever it’s possible to write report logs since you won’t be able to write an accurate one,” Jaehyun retorts, sounding smug.

“Fine. I’m bringing someone else then.”

“I’m sure Johnny would love to come if I can’t.”

“I’m going to drag you to the roof and throw you off the top of the building.”

 

***

 

Taeil has faced down murderers before. Drug dealers. Potential terrorists. He’s even managed to rake down suspects much bigger than him while seriously injured. And yet, standing in front of seven scowling, judgmental teenagers in the middle of an empty studio is more unnerving than almost anything else he’s ever dealt with.

Well. Six scowling, judgmental teenagers. One of them is smiling, just a little.

Their unimpressed looks don’t fade once Doyoung does a quick round of introductions, either. If anything, they deepen. Even the smiling one stops smiling.

Doyoung rolls his eyes as the teenagers exchange meaningful looks with one another. “Okay, guys, out with it.”

Finally, the one with black hair (Mark, Taeil thinks; the names of the teenagers are all kind of blurred together right now) steps forward and says, “Listen, if this is some joke to get back at us for calling your mom and telling her that you got arrested and –”

“Wait a minute. That was you guys?” Doyoung interrupts.

“I’m not saying that it was,” Mark says, raising his hands in a pacifying gesture, “but if we did tell her that she needed to come bail you out, maybe, hypothetically. This would be, like, a super creative way to get back at us. We wouldn’t have expected it from you.”

“I’m actually impressed,” the kid clinging to Mark adds.

Doyoung’s face is slowly turning red with what Taeil assumes is barely concealed rage, and he knows Jaehyun won’t be any help if he does end up exploding – knowing Jaehyun, he’d likely find it hot and egg him on – so Taeil steps forward and gives them a bland but hopefully reassuring smile.

“This really isn’t a joke, guys,” he says, using his best “talking to civilians” voice. “There was a real series of threats made against the festival you’ll be going to in June, and our team thinks that the best way to keep you and everyone else safe is to send me in undercover with you guys, at least until we catch the person behind the threats.”

The tallest of the kids snorts. “There’s no way you’re a spy. You’re shorter than Renjun.”

The shortest kid, who must be Renjun, lunges at the tall one and puts him into a rather impressive choke hold in the blink of an eye.

“Good form,” Jaehyun comments idly, watching as the tall one struggles to get out of Renjun’s grip to no avail.

“Don’t encourage him,” Doyoung hisses, elbowing Jaehyun in the ribs – rather forcefully, if Jaehyun’s ensuing wince is anything to go by. “Renjun, let Jisung go. This is serious.” His face isn’t quite as red as it was a moment ago, but he still sounds mad as hell.

“Seriously, though,” Jisung says, rubbing the side of his neck and wincing. “Don’t you have to be like, strong to be a spy?”

Taeil rolls his eyes, not caring if it comes off as rude. They’re teenagers. It’s part of their language, probably. “We aren’t _spies_ , we are government law enforcement officials. And even though I’m not a giant or anything like some of my coworkers, I’m more than capable of doing my job.”

“He could take any of you down in thirty seconds or less,” Jaehyun adds.

There’s a moment of silence. Then:

“Prove it,” the pink haired kid says.

Taeil laughs awkwardly. “What?”

“Prove it,” pink haired kid repeats. “Unless he’s full of shit.”

Taeil looks over at Doyoung, who shrugs. “I’m fine with it as long as you don’t hurt them, even though I kind of want to strangle them all right now still,” he says. “Go for it.”

“They probably won’t respect you otherwise,” Jaehyun adds unhelpfully.

Taeil exhales loudly. Jaehyun’s right, and he knows it. That doesn’t mean he has to like it though. “Fine. Fine. I’ll do it. Any volunteers?”

The kids exchange another series of looks amongst themselves. “Jeno should do it,” pink haired kid says eventually.

“Jaemin,” the formerly smiling kid protests, frowning. It looks out of place.

“You’re the strongest out of all of us,” Jaemin answers.

“I mean, probably, but I don’t want to hurt him,” Jeno replies.

Taeil can’t keep himself from laughing out loud at that. “That’s not going to happen. I promise.”

“Okay, if you’re sure, I guess,” Jeno says, moving to stand in front of Taeil. “Here?”

“Sure,” Taeil says, glancing at Doyoung one last time. He still looks completely unbothered by the prospect of Taeil taking down one of his charges, so Taeil turns to Jeno and says, “I’m going to take three steps back. Once I stop moving, you can rush me whenever you’re ready.”

Jeno still looks a little uncertain, but he moves forward more quickly than Taeil had expected. He’s not caught off guard, though. He grasps Jeno’s shirt tightly and slides down to the ground, using Jeno’s momentum against him to flip him over Taeil’s body and onto the floor. Taeil rolls over without losing his grip on Jeno and pins him briefly before letting go.

“Happy now?” Taeil asks, rolling back onto his feet. He reaches a hand down to Jeno to help him up, who accepts it, looking a little dazed.

“That was so cool,” Jisung says, sounding awed. There’s a murmur of agreement from the rest of the teenagers, who all look a little stunned themselves. “I guess you actually are a spy.”

“I told you, I’m not a spy,” Taeil says, sighing.

“Government law enforcement official, whatever,” Jaemin says mockingly. “But if you’re the one who’s going undercover with us, what’s the old guy doing here?”

Jaehyun makes a wounded noise. “I am not old,” he protests.

“You do kinda look like you’re around thirty,” Doyoung tells him.

“I’m younger than you!”

“Really? Strange, I don’t recall telling you my age,” Doyoung says archly, crossing his arms over his chest once again. Knowing Jaehyun, he likely looked Doyoung up on one of their databases to find out anything he could about him, and just outed himself. Taeil barely suppresses the urge to facepalm.

Jaehyun laughs nervously. “Can we pretend I didn’t say that and focus on the fact that I made you brownies instead?” he asks hopefully, holding the container he’s still clutching out like a life line.

Taeil is fully expecting Doyoung to, like, skin Jaehyun alive at this point or something. So he’s taken aback when Doyoung accepts the offered container of brownies and says, “That depends on how good the brownies are.”

“They’re really good, I promise,” Jaehyun says, grinning so broadly that his dimples are on full display. Doyoung stares silently at him for a good thirty seconds before seemingly remembering that they have an audience.

“Right! Well,” Doyoung says, clapping his hands together unnecessarily loudly, “I didn’t want you two to stop by today just for social hour. I have to my office and grab my laptop, but after that we can figure out the logistics of all this nonsense. You can wait here, if you want.”

Taeil shrugs and sits down on the floor, stretching his legs out in front of him.  “Sounds good to me.” The kids follow his lead, sprawling out on the floor around him like they own the place. It probably feels like they do, with as often as they must be there.

“I’ll go with you,” Jaehyun offers.

“If you must,” Doyoung says. He sounds annoyed, but Taeil doesn’t buy it. Not for one second. If anything, he’s pretty sure Doyoung was angling for Jaehyun to offer to go with him.

“Okay, what the fuck just happened there?” Jaemin asks the second the door closes behind Doyoung and Jaehyun.

Taeil laughs as he lays down flat on his back. “I could tell you, but I don’t think you’re old enough to know.”

 

***

 

“I think that went well,” Jaehyun says two hours later, when he and Taeil are driving back to HQ to provide a status update before heading home for the day.

“I agree, even though I know you’re just saying that because you got to flirt with Doyoung for a while,” Taeil replies. They’d managed to work out a solid schedule for Taeil to come in and practice with Dream three times a week, until he got the basic dance routines down. They’d penciled in some extra days he could come in and practice with them if needed, but Taeil was pretty sure they wouldn’t be necessary; he’d been shown a couple videos, and the choreography didn’t seem _that_ complicated. He also now knows the names of all seven members of Dream, which is an accomplishment in its own right, he thinks.

There’s just one thing bothering him, a little.

“I feel a _but_ coming on,” Jaehyun says. When Taeil side eyes him, he raises his hands defensively. “What? I know you. You don’t just agree things went well that easily.”

It’s true, so Taeil doesn’t argue the point. “I just think it’s a little weird that their choreographer was supposed to be there today but had something come up at the last minute.”

“Has everyone ever told you you read too much into things that are likely just coincidences?”

“You know, maybe I should have brought Johnny today. He’s always telling me I’m good at reading people and to trust my instincts whenever we’re not arguing with each other.”

Jaehyun makes a sound that sounds suspiciously like he’s trying not to laugh. “I bet he does,” he says. “But seriously, sometimes things happen. If you still haven’t met him in a week, then you can start getting paranoid. For now, just give the man the benefit of the doubt.”

Taeil huffs out a breath. “Fine. I’ll try. But I make no promises.”

“You know you just totally contradicted yourself, right?”

“Fuck off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we will *actually* meet Ten next chapter! promise!


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE pay attention to the updated tags -- there is talk of a past traumatic incident that caused a character to suffer from a form of PTSD. if this is something that you do not want to read, skip over the section that starts with "It doesn't take Taeil long..." and I will be happy to give a brief summary of what happens in that section either in a comment or at the end of the chapter. please also let me know if there are tags you think i missed that need to be added!

“I need someone to go to Dream’s practice studio with me today,” Taeil announces the next morning, climbing up onto his desk so he can peer into everyone’s cubicles. He’s found that he’s more likely to get the answer he wants from people if he can stare them down – quite literally, in this case.

“Get down from there, you’ll fall and hurt yourself again,” Jungwoo tells him.

Taeil sniffs haughtily. “That is why I am standing on my desk, rather than my chair,” he informs him. “So I will only fall if someone pushes me, and none of you are brave enough to do that.”

“I gotta be honest, I thought Jaehyun was going to go with you every day,” Yukhei admits, looking up(!) at Taeil. Taeil feels kind of invincible right now, like he’s on top of the whole world. Is this how tall people feel every day?

There’s a murmur of agreement, but Jaehyun doesn’t even look up from his phone.

“Jaehyun is banned for the next week so I don’t have to watch him flirt with Dream’s manager the whole time.”

“And…Jaehyun is okay with that?” Sicheng asks.

“Hmm?” Jaehyun says, seemingly finally realizing he’s being talked about.

“Sicheng is wondering why you’re not throwing a fit about Taeil not wanting to bring you along to his dance lesson today,” Johnny says, sounding bored.

That finally gets Jaehyun to look up from his phone. The grin on his face borders on manic, and it’s honestly kind of scary. “Oh, I don’t need to go,” he answers, waving his phone around. “I got a text from Doyoung this morning saying he forgave me for being a creep because the brownies I gave him were that good. He’s trying to get the recipe out of me, but I told him that’s a third date question.”

Johnny groans and buries his head in his hands. “Jae, we’ve talked about this. Just because you have access to government databases doesn’t mean you should use them to look up every vaguely attractive person you come across.”

Jaehyun gasps, sounding scandalized. “Excuse you, Doyoung is not just _vaguely attractive_. Just because you like your men short and sarcastic and kind of weird –”

“Jae,” Johnny warns.

“Okay, and kind of hot, I’ll give you that, but –”

Johnny stands up, and Taeil scrambles down from his desk. If Johnny and Jaehyun are about to argue, he needs to be as low to the ground as possible. They don’t argue often, but when they do, they can get destructive in a hurry. Last time it happened, Yukhei’s computer had to be replaced since it wound up being collateral damage.

“I’m just saying that Doyoung not being your type doesn’t mean he’s simply vaguely attractive,” Jaehyun says. Taeil can’t see him anymore, but he can _hear_ the pout in Jaehyun’s voice.

“That’s what you got from that, Jae? Really?” Yuta asks incredulously.

Johnny sits down after sending a sheepish smile in Taeil’s direction, and Taeil feels himself relax. He hadn’t even realized he was tensed up, though. Weird.

“Nothing else was relevant, since Doyoung forgave me for running him through three different databases and also because I will never need to look anyone else up ever again.”

“Just because he’s okay with you being creepy doesn’t mean he’s interested though,” Jungwoo points out gently.

Jaehyun makes a triumphant noise. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he says. “I asked him how he liked his eggs in the morning, and he said that if I played my cards right I might find out this weekend.”

There’s a long moment of silence, before Yuta finally groans and asks Jaehyun why the fuck he would ask someone that.

“Hey,” Johnny says quietly, standing back up and leaning over so that he’s looking into Taeil’s cubicle. “I’ll go with you today, if you want me to.”

“Why wouldn’t I want you to?” Taeil asks honestly, and is surprised to see Johnny looks…nervous?

“Nothing. I’m overthinking things, you know I do that sometimes,” Johnny answers. “What time do we have to be there?”

“One, so I was planning on heading over there during our lunch hour.”

Johnny shakes his head firmly. “No, you need to eat if you’re going to be dancing. We’ll leave around 11:30 so we can get lunch on the way. My treat,” he adds. “No arguing.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Taeil says weakly, and surprises himself with how much he means it.

 

***

 

There’s no one waiting in the lobby this time when Taeil leads Johnny into the still intimidating building downtown. It either means that Doyoung trusts Taeil to find his own way upstairs today, or that he’s gotten caught up in texting Jaehyun. Both seem equally plausible.

There is, however, a man who reminds Taeil a bit of a pixie standing in the hallway just outside of the practice room he’d spent several hours in yesterday. He bounces over to them, grinning.

“You must be Taeil, and Johnny, right?” he says, in a higher pitched voice than Taeil would have expected.

“That’s us,” Taeil agrees. Someone must have let Doyoung know who would be accompanying Taeil today, he thinks as he holds out a hand for the man to shake. They’re about the same height, he realizes, although the man is a bit more visibly muscular than Taeil himself is.

“I’m Ten, Dream’s main choreographer and dance instructor. It’s so nice to finally meet you both,” the man says enthusiastically, his grin somehow getting even brighter. He looks impish, and Taeil likes him immediately even as he registers how odd of a sentence that is. “I see you brought something to change into, go ahead and do that, there’s a changing room at the end of this hallway. We’ll be waiting for you in the studio.”

Taeil isn’t surprised that Johnny chooses to follow him down the hall instead of going into the studio. He looks pensive.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Taeil urges as he strips his shirt over his head.

Johnny turns away quickly. His face looks a little red as he does so, but that could also just be a trick of the lighting. “It’s probably nothing,” he says, coughing a little. “What are you thinking?”

Taeil grunts as he tries to wrestle his legs into the compression pants Sicheng had sworn would allow him to move more freely than his usual workout attire of basketball shorts and a loose t-shirt. “I like him,” Taeil says, and if it sounds a little breathless, well, getting these pants up over his thighs is almost a workout in of itself. Especially when he still finds himself being careful when he pulls the pants over the scar on his leg, months after it’s healed.

“He seems nice,” Johnny agrees after a long moment, right as Taeil stumbles and whacks his elbow against the wall he’d been standing next to in his attempt to keep from crashing to the ground. “Um. Are you okay?”

“Whoever came up with the concept of compression tights needs to die,” Taeil grits out.

Johnny says something, then, but it’s quiet enough that Taeil can’t make the actual words out.

“Done!” Taeil says triumphantly, once the pants are on and he’s slipped on the shoes he normally wears when he goes for a run. Johnny still has his back turned to him, staring pointedly at the tiled floor. Taeil crosses the room and pats him on the shoulder, making Johnny jump.

“Oh, you’re done,” Johnny says.

“I said I was done, did you not hear me?”

“Guess I was lost in my thoughts.” Johnny plucks Taeil’s workout bag from his hands, ignoring Taeil’s protests that he can easily carry it. “Well, come on, I’m looking forward to seeing you make a fool out of yourself. It’s the whole reason why I offered to come today.”

Taeil frowns before he can stop himself. “I thought you were being nice for once.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Taeil answers. He’s pretty sure Johnny heard him loud and clear, but if he wants to pretend otherwise, Taeil’s gonna let him.

 

***

 

As promised, Ten’s waiting for them in the practice studio along with about half of the Dream members. He gives Taeil a quick onceover and nods approvingly at his compression leggings.

“Obviously, the first thing you need to do is stretch before we get started,” Ten says, rocking back on his heels. Taeil gets the impression that staying still just isn’t something the man does often, if at all. “The kids offered to show you some of the ones I normally have them do, but that doesn’t seem like the best idea for today. The last thing I want to do is to put undue stress on your leg, so I’m going to keep a close eye on you to start.”

Taeil blinks, then blinks again, trying to make the words make sense. “My…leg?” he asks slowly.

Ten nods firmly. “Yep. I know that it feels like you have full function and range of motion back, but the scar tissue is new enough that you could end up hurting yourself if you rush into things. Ku – I mean, your bosses might kill me if I sent you back to them injured,” he finishes, with a smile that definitely looks a little strained.

Taeil exchanges a quick _did you hear that?_ look with Johnny, who nods almost imperceptibly.  He might not be as good as piecing clues together as Johnny is, but Taeil doesn’t need to be. Not when everything’s seemingly falling into place right in front of him like this. Kun is notoriously good at keeping things to himself and generally refuses to talk about work things once he’s off the clock, but if he’s close enough to Ten to tell him about Taeil’s injury last year…that can pretty much only mean one thing, in Taeil’s opinion.

(And honestly? It’s kind of a relief to have an idea of just why Kun’s been acting so cagey ever since they first got the report of the threats.)

“Probably,” Taeil agrees, relaxing. “Alright, let’s do this.”

 

***

 

It doesn’t take Taeil long to settle into his new routine of spending three afternoons a week rehearsing with Dream. He’s still hopeful that maybe they’ll figure out who was behind the threats and neutralize them long before he ever has to even think about getting on stage in front of thousands of people, but he still wants to be adequately prepared just in case.

Honestly, the thing that surprises him most is how quickly he bonds with the Dream kids. He’d been expecting to form some sort of distant relationship with them, polite but impersonal. Surface level. It had taken two full days of practice for him to be proven wrong.

“Listen, if you guys don’t stop distracting Taeil and let him focus, I’m going to have to ban you from the building whenever he’s here,” Ten tells Dream exasperatedly near the end of Taeil’s third week. “We only have two and a half weeks left before we have to leave for the festival, and one of those days is going to have to be spent at the hair salon.”

Taeil winces and tugs on the beanie he’d worn that morning to keep his hair out of his eyes. He’s accepted by now that not wanting a haircut is a battle he’s destined to lose, but that doesn’t mean he likes being reminded of his fate.

“You love us, and would never do that to us,” Jisung answers.

“Besides, he’s got most of it down already!” Chenle adds. “And I really want him to teach us that move he used on Jeno. It was so cool, I can’t believe you missed it!”

“Wait, what?” Yuta, Taeil’s companion for the day, cuts in.

Chenle turns to Yuta, his eyes wide and sparkling. It’s adorable, and Taeil has to work to fight the urge to reach out and pinch his cheeks. “On the day that Taeil and Doyoungie’s boyfriend came to meet us, we thought Doyoungie was playing a prank on us to get revenge and that Taeil was a fake spy. So to prove it we made him take down Jeno because he’s the strongest, and Taeil flipped him in the air over his head!”

Taeil's suddenly really disappointed that Doyoung had to make a phone call earlier and stepped out of the room, because he would pay money to see the other man's face when he heard one of the kids refer to Jaehyun as  _Doyoungie’s boyfriend_. Lots of it.

“Really,” Yuta drawls, grin spreading slowly over his face. “They never told us about that.”

Taeil shrugs. “Didn’t seem relevant.”

“I’m surprised Doyoung allowed that,” Ten adds.

“If it helps, Mark blabbed that we were behind that call to his mom and he was pissed at us,” Donghyuck offers.

Ten laughs and shakes his head. “You brats,” he says fondly. “But if Taeil’s willing to go get his hair done on a Saturday, I don’t see the harm in taking the rest of the day off dance practice if he wants to teach you guys some self-defense moves.”

There’s no man alive who could say no to seven teenagers suddenly giving him pleading looks. Jaemin honestly looks like he might cry if Taeil refuses – and even though he _knows_ it’s an act, it’s still an extremely effective one. So he agrees.

Everything’s fine for almost an hour, until the bottom hem of the shorts Taeil’s wearing ride up just enough that the edge of the scar on his thigh is visible. He doesn’t realize what's happened until Mark freezes in the process of pulling himself back up to his feet and says, “Holy shit, what happened to your leg?”

“Language!” Doyoung says from across the room, having reappeared about ten minutes before. He lowers his phone, though, and Taeil can see on his face the exact moment that he sees what Mark had seen. “Wait, fuck, what _did_ happen to your leg?”

“Language!” Yuta repeats mockingly, already having moved to wrap an arm around Taeil’s shoulders reassuringly. “Listen, I know you don’t like talking about it, so if you want to tell them to fuck off, or if you want to fake an emergency to go back to headquarters now, I’ll back you up,” he says quietly.

Taeil leans into Yuta’s hold and closes his eyes with a small sigh. “My therapist said that it’s not good to keep it all inside and that I should talk about what happened sometimes,” he answers. “This might be good.”

If he’s being completely honest, Taeil doesn’t remember a lot of what happened that night. The government provided therapist he’s been seeing since he was healed enough to leave the hospital has suggested it’s a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and he’s inclined to believe her. What he does remember is this: hearing shouting while walking down the street, backtracking to see what it was about, and hitting the ground in a heap like he’d been shoved. The next thing he remembers is waking up in a hospital room with Johnny sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. The investigation into the incident had concluded that they had stumbled into a drug deal that was going south and were truly in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that doesn’t keep Taeil from wondering sometimes if he could have somehow done things differently. Even if he can’t manage to fill in the gaps between his memory and the report. (He’s thought about asking Johnny about that day, but something in his gut tells him it’s not the best idea. His therapist, when he had mentioned it to her, had agreed.)

“That’s…really scary,” Jisung says, once Taeil finishes telling them everything he can. A quick glance around the room tells him that everyone, minus Yuta (obviously) and Ten (not surprisingly, since Taeil’s certain that Kun had likely told him about the incident in the past), looks completely shocked. “You weren’t even doing anything!”

“Well, we weren’t in the best area, but yeah,” Taeil agrees. “But that’s life. Sometimes bad things happen, but we can’t let them define us. How we move forward is what matters.”

He’s not sure who moves forward first, but suddenly Taeil finds himself (and Yuta, who’d never let go of him while he was talking) crushed in the middle of a rather enthusiastic group hug. Even Doyoung joins in.

“You’re really brave,” someone – it’s muffled, but Taeil thinks it might be Renjun – says.

“And a badass,” someone else adds. It’s equally muffled, but Taeil’s certain that came from Jaemin. He waits for Doyoung to reprimand Jaemin for cussing like he had Mark earlier, but it never comes.

 

***

 

“You are, you know,” Yuta tells him later.

“Thanks.”

 

***

 

Taeil finally goes and gets his hair cut the Saturday before they’re set to pack up and head to the festival with Dream. The festival starts on Thursday, but their tentative plans are to arrive on Wednesday evening to scope out the grounds and the backstage areas to get a feel for things. Dream, as one of the headliners, won’t be performing until Sunday afternoon; luckily for them it’s the type of festival where it’s not unusual to see the performers hanging out all weekend long, so they won’t look out of place.

He times his arrival on Monday morning to be as close to on time as he can bear to get any mocking that’s bound to come his way done and over with as quickly as possible. It happens every time someone gets a haircut, even when it looks decent, because that’s the kind of relationship they have with each other.

It goes without saying, then, that Taeil’s shocked when Johnny reacts to his new haircut by making a squeaking noise, dropping the folder he’s holding, and hightailing it completely out of the office.

“What the fuck just happened?” Taeil asks, once he manages to pick his jaw up off the ground.

“He’s not used to you looking that hot and he doesn’t know how to deal with it,” Yukhei replies.

Taeil waits for someone to explain or at least elaborate a little. No one does.

“I hate you all,” Taeil says loudly as he sits down at his desk.

“No you don’t,” Jungwoo says serenely.

“No, I don’t,” Taeil mutters.

 

***

 

The rest of the day passes by normally until about 4pm, when there’s a loud crash from Taeyong’s office followed by him shouting for everyone to stop what they’re doing and get to the conference room, right away, and that he’ll meet them here in a minute. Taeyong yelling isn’t quite as rare as Kun doing so, but it’s rare enough that no one hesitates to listen.

“Kun’s on his way,” Taeyong tells him when he comes in, about five minutes later. “He…needs a minute. A more detailed threat just came through, and it’s not good.”

“Another one?” Jaehyun asks, at the same time Yukhei asks, “Is Kun okay?”

“No,” Kun says from the doorway. He looks like he wants to throw up. “I’m not okay.”

“Kun,” Taeyong says gently. “I think it’s time to tell them the truth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: we FINALLY get some answers. also, while the humor will remain (i hope), next chapter is where it starts getting a little darker as the focus turns more towards the investigation itself!


	4. Four

Kun still looks like he wants to throw up, but now he looks a little defeated as well. “I know you’re right, but I – I don’t – where do I even start?” he says helplessly.

“From the beginning, I think,” Taeyong says kindly.

Kun nods robotically as he sits down.  “Yeah. Alright. Um,” he says, sounding nervous (Taeil has never heard Kun sound nervous before, and it’s freaking him the hell out), “I haven’t been completely honest with you guys. Taeyong hasn’t either, but that was because I asked him to keep my secret, so please don’t be mad at him. I also hope you’ll forgive me, but I understand if you can’t.”

Taeil’s startled when Johnny bumps his hand against Taeil’s underneath the table. Taeil turns his hand palm up in silent invitation, and Johnny takes his hand in his own. Something ugly in the pit of Taeil’s stomach settles.

“A couple of years ago, before I took the job here, there was this case that landed on my desk that seemed simple enough that I worked on it solo. Embezzlement case. Cut and dry. I think it took me two weeks to get a warrant for the suspect’s arrest. I had to testify at his trial, of course. The suspect ended up being sentenced to fifteen years and restitution, which took a big financial toll on his family. After the trial, his son cornered me. Told me he’d get me back for ruining his father’s life if it was the last thing he did.”

Taeil sucks in a sharp breath. Having a vengeful family member after you is one of the unspoken fears of their profession, and something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

Johnny squeezes his hand reassuringly. Taeil squeezes back.

“I blew it off, of course,” Kun shrugs. “The kid was like nineteen. What was he going to do? Nothing, I thought. Until the day that I came home from work to find him at my apartment with a gun in his pocket, trying to pick the lock. He’d followed me home a different day without me realizing it, said that he was going to break into my apartment and wait for me and shoot me when I walked in the door. The thing was, though…I was home early that day. Had he succeeded in getting in, and I had come home at my normal time, I wouldn’t have been the first person walking through the door that night. It would have been my boyfriend, who could have paid the price for me not taking something seriously enough. It’s been three years and I honestly still have nightmares about it.”

“What happened next?” Jungwoo asks quietly.

Kun sighs. “I freaked out. I tried breaking up with my boyfriend probably half a dozen times, thinking it would keep him safe. He wouldn’t let me, thank god. Told me that we’d been together for too long and I needed to cut out the self-sacrificial bullshit because that would be letting the kid win. He was right, of course, so I stopped. We talked it over and decided the best course of action would be for me to transfer and kind of start over, I guess. Which I did by coming here. I swore to myself that I would never let my job get to the point where he got tangled up in it ever again, and then –” Kun breaks off, shaking his head. “And then this fucking case got transferred to us, and it got transferred to us _because_ of him.”

Judging by how Johnny tenses underneath Taeil’s hand, it clicks for him a second before it does for Taeil himself. “Oh my god,” Johnny says. “There’s no way.”

“They wouldn’t do that to you after what happened before,” Taeil adds.

Kun laughs mirthlessly. “They did.”

“I’m missing something here,” Sicheng says, sounding a little hurt. It makes sense, because out of all of them, Sicheng’s probably the closest to Kun excluding Taeyong, of course. If he didn’t know about any of this, that means Kun’s done a spectacular job of keeping his cards close to his chest over the last few years.

Kun winces. “I’m so sorry, Sichengie,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “I made a lot of mistakes, I think.”

“I’m not mad!” Sicheng says quickly. “I don’t blame you for being scared and wanting to keep a separation, I just don’t know what Taeil and Johnny know and I’m confused.”

It’s Jaehyun who speaks up next. “It has to be Ten, right? You guys mentioned him while talking about the undercover idea, and it’s obviously not Doyoung since he and I are, well. You guys know. I’m not surprised Taeil figured it out, but how does Johnny know?”

“He was with me the day I met Ten, and Ten both knew about my leg and didn’t quite manage to cut himself off when saying something about Kun,” Taeil supplies. “I’ve been pretty sure since then that he was the connection, but I had no idea about everything else.” That last part isn’t quite the truth, but this is one of the situations where a white lie seems like it would be better than the truth.

“He told me about that, and I was expecting one of you to ask me about it,” Kun admits.

“I don’t know about Taeil, but I figured you’d tell us about it when you ready,” Johnny says, and Taeil hums in agreement. “But why is he the reason the higher ups gave us this case instead of keeping it for themselves?”

Taeyong snorts derisively. “We figure they must have come across Kun’s personnel files in their initial fact gathering once the first threat came in, since Ten’s listed as his emergency contact. We were told from the start that they decided to give it to us because we might have an _easier time gaining access to the festival itself_ ,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Honestly, I think the original intent was to let us do the grunt work, and then take the case back from us once we’d secured access, because it was definitely implied that if we didn’t use Kun’s connections that there’d be…consequences,” he says, wincing.

Taeil doesn’t even realize he’s tensed up, knowing full well what Taeyong’s getting at, until Johnny rubs his thumb against the back of Taeil’s hand. He exhales slowly, blowing the air out through his mouth, and sees Johnny smile just a little bit out of the corner of his eye. Johnny still doesn’t let go of his hand, either, but to be fair, Taeil’s holding on just as tightly.

“That’s fucked up,” Yukhei’s saying when Taeil turns his attention back to the conversation at hand.

“It is,” Kun agrees. “That’s why I was so mad. I felt like I was being used.”

“Um, that’s because you were being used,” Yuta says hotly. “I know they’re your bosses and everything, but jesus. You should have told them to go fuck themselves.”

Kun shakes his head, and it looks a little sad. “That wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. Not just for Ten, but for the kids.”

“How do you know that they won’t still force us out this weekend, though?” Yuta presses.

Taeyong actually smiles at that. “Oh, that’s easy. They can’t anymore, because if they force us out then they lose Taeil. When we realized the undercover idea might actually work, that cemented this as our investigation until the end, whenever that may be. It also doesn’t hurt that all of our credentials are linked with Dream, and if they did kick us out it would look really suspicious if they didn’t cooperate with half of their on-site staff.”

“Oh,” Taeil says, mostly to himself. “So that’s why Kun was so relieved when I said I’d do it.” Kun hears though, and nods firmly in Taeil’s direction.

“What about this new threat that came in today? You said it was bad?” Johnny asks Taeyong.

“Yeah,” Taeyong grimaces. “It was a lot more detailed than any of the others. I can show you all the exact wording later, but basically it said that there will be three bombs hidden backstage, all set to go off during – during Dream’s performance this weekend.”

No wonder Kun looked like he was going to be sick earlier.

Jungwoo leans forward. “Well, so that confirms it’s someone with backstage access, then, and probably a worker. Did they specify that it would be when Dream is on stage, or did they say, like, five o’clock or something?”

“They specifically said it would be when Dream was on stage,” Taeyong answers.

Everyone frowns at that, Taeil included. Either it’s an extremely odd coincidence, or the person behind the threats has somehow figured out that the investigation is running through Dream at this point. Taeil doesn’t like either option, and he knows he’s not the only one.

The meeting wraps up pretty quickly after that; Kun’s visibly emotionally drained, and the rest of the room doesn’t look much better. Johnny finally lets go of Taeil’s hand once Taeyong dismisses them, and Taeil misses its warmth almost immediately.

(He also pretends not to see the knowing smirk Jaehyun shoots him from across the table as Johnny stands up, thanks.)

 

***

 

Taeil arrives to chaos Wednesday morning. No one is at their desks, everyone is yelling, and Jungwoo is lurking by the employee entrance when Taeil comes in, looking kind of suspicious.

“Why are you late? You’re never late,” Jungwoo says accusingly, pointing a finger in Taeil’s face. “Did you get a tip that everyone was losing their shit and you should avoid coming in as long as possible? Because if you did and you didn’t warn _me_ , you’re dead to me.”

Taeil takes a step back before Jungwoo can poke his eye out or something. “Uh. No? I had to stop by the hair salon as soon as they opened this morning to get my hair touched up,” he says, gesturing to where his new undercut now has a vaguely floral design shaved into it. (The hairstylist had tried talking him into dyeing his hair red at the same time, but he’d refused because he didn’t have the time this morning. He might go for it some other time.)

“Ooh,” Jungwoo says, moving his finger to prod at Taeil’s hair gently. “Pretty. I bet it’ll look amazing if your hair’s pushed back.”

Taeil lets Jungwoo touch his hair for about another minute before he finally caves and asks, “What the hell happened?”

Jungwoo’s answering eyeroll is one for the ages. Apparently, Doyoung had called Kun sometime last night and told him that he was planning on bringing the Dream kids by their office before they left for the festival this afternoon, and the news sent everyone into a tizzy.

“I thought Xuxi and Sichengi were literally going to throw hands over who got to give the kids the grand tour of the office, and Yuta was egging them on,” Jungwoo complains.

Taeil can’t help the snort he lets out at that. “Where were Kun and Taeyong when that was happening?”

“Hiding in the bathroom, I think,” Jungwoo says with a sigh. His words are punctuated with a crash as the yelling in the background comes to an abrupt stop. “Um.”

“Probably not anymore,” Taeil snickers, taking Jungwoo by the arm. “Let’s go see what happened.”

It doesn’t take long to see the source of the sound when they round the corner – Jaehyun’s on the ground, his desk chair tipped over next to him. Yukhei’s apologizing profusely, Sicheng looks confused, Yuta has his back turned but seems to be laughing, going off how his shoulders are shaking, and Johnny’s sitting on Jaehyun’s desk laughing his ass off. He’s a sight for sore eyes, and Taeil feels himself wanting to laugh along with him.

“What the fuck is going on out here?” Taeyong shouts, running towards them with Kun hot on his heels. “Jaehyun, get off the ground.”

“I can’t, I’m dead,” Jaehyun whines.

Taeyong reaches out and nudges Jaehyun none too gently in the ribs, causing him to yelp and jump away from Taeyong’s foot. It makes Johnny laugh even harder, at least until Taeyong glares at him. “Looks like you’re moving just fine to me,” Taeyong tells Jaehyun dryly once he looks away from Johnny. Jaehyun just groans in response.

“What happened?” Kun says, turning to face Sicheng and Yukhei.

Sicheng shrugs. “Yukhei and I had a minor disagreement. I’m not sure how Jaehyun ended up on the floor.”

“Yes you do, you –” Yukhei comes to an abrupt stop as Yuta stomps on his foot. “Never mind.”

“If you don’t stop behaving like a bunch of children, I swear to god I will call Dongyoung and tell him not to bring the kids by today,” Kun threatens. The threat hits the spot, because almost everyone gasps.

“Yeah, I have a question, what are they even coming here for?” Taeil asks.

“Don’t question it, just be glad they are,” Yukhei says. “You get to see them every day, the rest of us want to see them too.”

Taeil squints at him, trying to figure out if Yukhei’s being serious or not. “I see them three times a week for a couple hours,” he says slowly, erring on the side of caution. Yukhei’s more of the earnest type, so he’s probably not being sarcastic.

“Like I said, every day,” Yukhei says firmly.

Taeyong says, “To actually answer your question, Taeil, we’re not entirely sure. Doyoung told Kun that he had his reasons and he didn’t press the issue.”

“When are they even coming?”

Kun glances down at his watch and grimaces. “Five minutes from now.”

Just then, their receptionist pokes her head around the corner. “Taeyong? Kun?” she says timidly. “The angry man from a few weeks ago is here with a bunch of kids, and he says you’re expecting them?”

“Or now,” Taeyong says brightly. “Send them in.”

She looks a little panicked but does as told, and Doyoung leads Dream in a moment later with Ten bringing up the rear. Jaehyun’s still on the ground, but he scrambles to his feet when he sees Doyoung, his ears turning red.

“What are you doing here?” Chenle asks Kun immediately, his face brightening.

Kun laughs, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “I work here.”

Chenle pouts. “No you don’t, stop messing with me.”

“He does, Lele,” Ten says. “He’s the boss and everything.”

“Second in command,” Kun smiles at Ten, and it’s kind of oddly intimate in such a public setting.

Ten smiles back at him. “Close enough.”

Doyoung coughs. Loudly. “Not to break you up or anything, lovebirds, but we came here for a reason and we’re on a tight schedule,” he says briskly. “Do you guys have enough chairs for everyone, or do we have to do this standing?”

Taeyong and Kun exchange a brief look. “We could bring chairs out here from the conference room,” Taeyong says.

“Ooh, can we go in there instead?” Jisung asks him, widening his eyes to look as innocent as possible. Taeil can literally _see_ Taeyong’s resolve crumbling, so it’s no surprise that they end up in there. It’s a tight fit – Renjun is literally sitting on Sicheng’s lap – but the kids look content. Well, actually, everyone does, pretty much.

It turns out that Doyoung wanted to go over the extra precautions they want Dream to follow while they’re at the festival and make sure they know exactly who to turn to if they see something suspicious. It’s a smart idea. They’d only met Taeyong once, and Kun hadn’t gone with Taeil to one of his practice sessions once, although he’s clearly familiar with the kids, and they with him.

“Are you really sure that Kun’s a spy, too? You’re not playing a prank on us?” Jaemin asks Doyoung.

Doyoung gives him a critical look. “What have you guys done lately that would make you think I would joke about something this serious?”

It’s a trap. It’s an expertly laid one, and Jaemin walks right into it when he says, “Jeno called your brother –”

“Are you serious?” Doyoung says, turning to Jeno with a wounded look on his face. “You? Of all people? Betrayed me like that?”

Jeno shrinks down as small as he can in his chair. “Nana blackmailed me,” he says petulantly.

“He interrogated me for almost an hour about my new spy boyfriend!”

“You really need to keep your phone away from them, babe,” Jaehyun tells Doyoung, tugging his chair closer to him.

“Has anyone told them that we’re not actually spies?” Taeyong asks.

“It’s not worth it,” Taeil answers. “Trust me.”

Ten claps his hands, grabbing the attention of everyone in the room. (Well, most people – Doyoung is still glaring at Jaemin and Jeno.) “We do have to go soon,” he says, sounding almost apologetic. “Does anyone have any other questions?”

Jisung’s hand shoots up in the air like he’s in a classroom or something. “What do I do if a bad guy corners me?” he asks, almost eagerly.

“Go for their eyes,” Yuta says immediately, over Kun’s protest that they won’t let anyone get that close to them. “Eyes first, then either an elbow or a foot in their center mass. That will give you time to run.”

“Don’t just poke their eyes, use your thumbs and push in as hard as you can,” Sicheng continues, ignoring the horrified look Yukhei’s giving him and Yuta. “Or if you can’t get that kind of leverage, scratch with your fingernails.”

“They didn’t need to know that,” Yukhei says, his voice shaking a little. It would probably kill him if he knew Taeil’d taught them self-defense techniques already, Taeil thinks.

“Can’t be too safe,” Sicheng shrugs, patting Renjun’s shoulder idly.

 

***

 

Doyoung drops one last bombshell when they walk Dream out of the building, to the parking garage where two vans are waiting.

“Since we’re splitting up, there’s room for one of you in each van. I figured Taeil would be one, but the other one…I’m not sure,” Doyoung says, but his eyes slide over to Jaehyun obviously.

“I don’t have my bag with me,” Taeil protests.

“Everyone knows it’s in your car since we were planning on heading out there tonight,” Johnny says from behind him. Taeil turns around to give him a dirty look, but Johnny just smiles at him guilelessly, the asshole.

“I volunteer!” Jaehyun shouts, unsurprisingly.

“No, I want to go with them,” Yukhei shouts back.

Jaehyun crosses his arms across his chest. “Are you really going to deprive me the chance to take a road trip with the love of my life?”

Taeil’s jaw nearly hits the ground when Kun steps forward and says, “No, but I am. Taking a road trip with the love of _my_ life sounds like a wonderful idea.”

Even Taeyong looks stunned. “Are you sure?” he asks Kun.

“I’m sure,” Kun says, beaming as Ten laces their fingers together in front of God and everyone else to see.

“We’ll see each other tonight, calm down,” Doyoung tells Jaehyun, who’s pouting.

“You sweet talker,” Jaehyun sniffs, but he stops pouting.

Johnny makes a disbelieving noise, and when Taeil turns to look at him again, he’s shaking his head.

“What is it?” Taeil asks quietly.

Johnny sighs. “Do you ever think that maybe Jaehyun’s got it right? That just…going for it in any and all situations is the best way to live your life?”

Taeil stares at him for a long moment; the air between them is heavy with tension, but he can’t quite pinpoint why. “I don’t know,” he says eventually.

Johnny looks at Taeil’s mouth briefly before dragging his gaze back to Taeil’s eyes. “I’m just thinking out loud. Think the pressure’s getting to me,” he says, with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Taeil wants to ask, to press further and see what Johnny’s getting at. Before he can, though, Donghyuck yells his name, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin.

“Looks like it’s time for me to go.”

Johnny nods. “Yeah. Um. I’ll grab your stuff out of your car and bring it to you tonight. Be safe, okay?”

“I will,” Taeil promises. He gives Johnny one last look before turning and running across the garage, to where Donghyuck is hanging outside of one of the vans.

“Finally,” Donghyuck says, ducking back inside to let Taeil in. “Why didn’t you kiss your boyfriend goodbye? Doyoungie kissed his boyfriend goodbye.”

Doyoung sighs heavily from the front seat as Taeil slams the side door closed. “For the last time, Jaehyun is not my boyfriend. Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”

“Because you’re lying,” Renjun says from the back seat. Taeil turns to see Jaemin, Jeno, and Renjun in the third row, all of whom are looking at him curiously. “People don’t kiss their _friends_ , Doyoungie.”

“I kiss my friends,” Jaemin shrugs.

“I’m not saying I don’t like him. I’m just saying we’re nothing official yet,” Doyoung says, sounding exasperated. “Why am I even telling you guys this? Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that Jeno called my fucking _brother_ and told him about Jaehyun.”

“Because you love us,” Donghyuck says, unbothered, as the driver backs the van out of the parking spot. “Anyways. Taeil. Why didn’t you kiss your boyfriend goodbye?”

Taeil closes his eyes and leans back against the seat. “Johnny and I aren’t together. Johnny doesn’t even like me half the time.” It hurts to say it out loud, but it’s true. Their relationship _has_ been a lot better lately, but Taeil’s pretty sure that’s just because they’ve been around each other less frequently than normal.

Doyoung laughs out loud from the front seat. Taeil ignores him.

“Hey,” Jeno says. When Taeil opens his eyes, Jeno’s leaning over the seat, looking down at Taeil with a kind smile on his face. “Maybe he’s just bad at feelings and he doesn’t know how to deal with how much he likes you sometimes. Do you like him?”

Taeil doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how to.

“Huh. Maybe you’re both bad at feelings,” Jeno says, sitting back down.

Taeil closes his eyes again. He has a feeling it’s going to be a long ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys! these notes might be a little long, so bear with me :)
> 
> first things first -- i hope the big reveal in this chapter was worth the wait! i'd apologize for last chapter's cliffhanger, but i'd have to be sorry for that... :)
> 
> second, you might notice that i changed the estimated chapter count from six. i'm no longer 100% certain how many chapters this will have, but i do know it's more than two more. i'll update the chapter count with a more concrete number when i have one!
> 
> third, i do have a [twitter](https://twitter.com/zeromiles5) and a brand new [cc](https://curiouscat.me/zeromiles5) if anyone wants to stop by and say hi to me there!
> 
> and finally, i wanted to thank you all for the kudos/subscriptions/bookmarks/comments! the reception this fic is getting means a lot to me -- it's my first published work in any fandom in YEARS, and my first chaptered work ever, and i appreciate all of it so much.


	5. Five

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Taeil says.

 Taeyong stops walking to turn around and stare at Taeil. “This is literally our job, Taeil.”

“No, I know it is!” Taeil says quickly, because Taeyong’s left eye is starting to twitch and it’s kind of worrying him. “But like. I’m supposed to be going undercover as a band member, right? How am I going to explain sneaking around behind the scenes the night before things even get started if someone sees me and asks questions about it later?”

“Tell them you’ve never been to a festival like this and you just wanted to see what it was like,” Taeyong says, sounding completely unconcerned. “You can’t tell me this was anything like you expected it to be.”

“That’s true,” Taeil says reluctantly. The main stage is huge, but that was to be expected. He’s seen videos of festival performances before after all. What he _hadn’t_ counted on was the small city that seemed to have been constructed out of tents and trailers and even an actual building or two behind it.

Taeyong smiles knowingly at him. “See? It’s a lot bigger than you thought it would be, huh? That’s why we need to scope it out. And since I gave Kun the night off so he and Ten could spend some time together and no one can seem to get a hold of Yukhei, I need you here,” he finishes, wandering off before Taeil can get another word in. Knowing Taeyong, he wants to see every inch of the backstage area before he heads back to their hotel and will likely be taking notes to forward to Kun later, too.

“Don’t kill Yukhei if you find him!” Taeil calls after him.

“I can’t make any promises!” Taeyong shouts back.

Oh, well. Taeil tried to save Yukhei. Whatever happens next is whatever happens next, he supposes.

Taeil tries to explore the backstage area. He really does. But it makes sense, he supposes, that he keeps being drawn back over to the main stage. There’s a chance he might be performing on it in a couple days, so it won’t hurt if he acquaints himself with it beforehand, right?

Being on stage, combined with the sight of the sprawling empty fields that will soon be packed with thousands of people, takes his breath away. It makes him feel small, smaller than normal, but powerful all at the same time. Not for the first time, Taeil wonders what his life might have been like had he accepted the offer he had in hand to become a trainee instead of going on to college and continuing on to his current job; it’s a less fleeting thought than it normally is, but even still it doesn’t take him long to brush it off. Had he done so, he likely would have never met the rest of his team, who are his best friends and some the best people he knows.

He likely would have never met Johnny, which is a much more distressing thought than it used to be.

Taeil pushes that line of thinking away as quickly as it comes. Now isn’t the time to sort through his jumbled thoughts and feelings where Johnny is concerned. Not with this weekend looming large right in front of him. Not with all the people whose lives are literally depending on him doing his job properly right now.

Taeil’s about to turn around and go back to the makeshift city where (most) of the rest of the team is when he sees three shadowy figures in the distance heading in his direction. Two of them seem to be leading the third one forward, and Taeil squints as he leans forward, trying to make them out. As they get closer, one of the temporary lights already constructed and turned on illuminates their faces, and –

“Yukhei?” Taeil shouts. “You better have a good reason for having them with you, so help me god.”

Yukhei breaks out into a run, Chenle and Jisung hot on his heels. “Sorry,” he says, grinning up at Taeil sheepishly. “I found them in the lobby trying to sneak out, and I couldn’t get ahold of Kun and I don’t have Doyoung’s number, so I figured finding you was my next best option.”

Chenle rolls his eyes. “We weren’t sneaking out. We were going to the convenience store next to the hotel to get snacks before curfew,” he tells Taeil. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“Why didn’t one of you call Doyoung?” he asks Chenle and Jisung.

Jisung shrugs. “We were going to, but then Yukhei said that he was going to bring us out here to find you and that seemed a lot cooler than going back to our rooms without candy.”

Yukhei gasps dramatically, placing a large hand vaguely over his heart. “You played me,” he says, sounding betrayed.

Taeil can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, they do that,” he says wryly, watching as Chenle and Jisung jump over the already constructed barricades to scramble up on stage. “Hey, don’t let them near your phone. The last thing we need is them getting Jae’s number or something and prank calling him.”

“But they’re so cute,” Yukhei whines. “Like little baby flowers. Don’t tell me they’re evil.”

“I like how you assume we don’t already have Jaehyun’s number,” Chenle says, smiling brightly.

“I didn’t hear that. Did you hear that, Yukhei?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Yukhei agrees, just barely managing to clear the same barricade the two kids had climbed over with ease. Once he manages to hoist himself up onto the stage, he stands up and looks down at Chenle and Jisung with his arms crossed. “You know, since you guys tricked me, I really should have Taeil call Doyoung or Ten and tell them where you guys are and bring you back to the hotel.”

Taeil barely suppresses a laugh as the kids give Yukhei identical pleading expressions. “You can’t do that. You can’t interrupt Tennie’s date, he was so excited for it,” Chenle says pleadingly.

“I can still call Doyoung,” Yukhei threatens, even though Taeil knows he’s already lost his resolve.

Jisung shakes his head. “It’s actually a good thing we’re here,” he says shrewdly. “You guys don’t know what backstage of these festivals look like. Lele and I do, and we can point out anything that looks weird.”

That’s a really good point, Taeil thinks. They would also give Taeyong’s suggested cover story more plausibility than Taeil wandering around by himself would have.

Yukhei looks at Taeil, clearly wanting his input. “I’m fine with it, but you still get to explain to Taeyong and whoever else asks about it why you brought them here,” he says, smiling at how quickly Yukhei deflates.

“But Doyoung is really scary,” Yukhei whines.

Jisung and Chenle stop their celebratory jumping and screeching to look at Yukhei incredulously. “No, he’s not,” Jisung says. “Any other manager would have killed us by now, but he doesn’t even yell at us most of the time.”

“He’s probably going to yell at us about this,” Chenle tells Jisung.

“But this isn’t our fault,” Jisung answers. “Duh.”

It kind of is, but Taeil doesn’t point that out. He doesn’t want to burst their bubbles, and Yukhei looks kind of like he might cry. So Taeil pats him on the shoulder and says, “For what it’s worth, Doyoung isn’t the one you have to be scared of right now.”

Yukhei’s face goes pale. “Is Taeyong pissed?”

Taeil nods solemnly. “His eye was twitching and he couldn’t promise not to kill you.”

Yukhei groans.

 

***

 

Yukhei had eventually decided that he might be better off seeking Taeyong out and explaining the situation to him instead of waiting for Taeyong to find him. So he’d gone off in search of him and left Taeil alone with Chenle and Jisung, much to their dismay.

“I wanted to see him get yelled at,” Chenle says, pouting a little. “I bet it would have been entertaining.”

“He probably would have yelled at you guys, too,” Taeil points out.

“Oh,” Chenle says, pout disappearing immediately. “Never mind.”

“Let’s go find our trailer,” Jisung says, tugging on Taeil’s arm. “That way we’ll know where it is, and we can cover a lot of ground on the way!”

Realization slams into Taeil like a ton of bricks falling from the sky. “You guys are pretending to be spies right now, aren’t you,” Taeil says, closing his eyes and exhaling loudly.

“We decided that _secret agents_ sound cooler,” Jisung says, sounding completely unbothered by Taeil’s reaction. “Let’s go! Before Taeyong finds us!”

Taeil reaches out and grabs Jisung by the elbow right as the kid attempts to take off running. He’s got a couple centimeters on Taeil, yes, but Taeil has muscle, experience, and determination. “And where do you think you’re going?” Taeil asks once Jisung stops struggling and turns to face him.

“To…find our trailer?” Jisung tries. Next to Taeil, Chenle is outright laughing at Jisung, and Taeil can’t say he blames him.

“We’re going to do that, but you can’t run off without me,” Taeil admonishes him gently. “Or else I’ll have to take you guys back to the hotel, and Yukhei will have offered himself up to the wolves for nothing.”

Jisung looks at Taeil thoughtfully for a moment. “Can I lead the way, though?”

“Go ahead.”

The Dream trailer is situated near the back of the rest of the artist trailers, far enough from the stage that Taeil suspects any noise that manages to travel back here will be faint.

“Ooh, it’s bigger than the one we had at our last outdoor festival,” Chenle says, bouncing on his heels. “Can we go in?”

Taeil’s about to say yes, just to reward them for thinking to ask first instead of storming in, but his instincts are suddenly telling him that’s not a good idea. “Wait a second,” he says quietly, holding out a hand to the two teenagers to indicate they should stay where they are. He creeps forward, and –

The door to the trailer is slightly ajar, and there’s a light on inside.

“Taeil?” Chenle whispers hesitantly.

“Hang on a second,” Taeil answers, bending down to pick up a couple of pebbles off the ground. He rolls them in his palm for a second, before using his other hand to throw a couple of them at the side panel. It’s harmless, but it makes enough of a racket that if there is someone inside, it should startle them into revealing themselves one way or another.

Sure enough, there’s a loud noise from inside that’s quickly followed up by a young looking man with bright red hair opens the door and sticks his head out. His eyes are wide as he looks at Taeil, but when he sees Chenle and Jisung he visibly relaxes.

“Oh, hi,” the man says, jumping off the top of the stairs. (Taeil makes a mental note to warn Doyoung that his charges might attempt to do the same thing at some point this weekend.) “I didn’t expect to see any of you until tomorrow, this is a surprise.”

“Who are you?” Jisung blurts.

The man laughs and waves one of his hands in the air, like he can’t believe the joke Jisung’s making right now. “I’m Minjun. I’ve been assigned to you guys this weekend, so I’ll be making sure you guys have everything you need and get where you need to go on time!”

“So like, Doyoung’s assistant this weekend?” Chenle asks. When Minjun nods, Chenle says, “That’s weird. He doesn’t need one of those.”

Minjun shrugs, and it comes across as overexaggerated to Taeil. “Well, this event is so big that they assigned all of the groups one,” he says. “If your manager is that on top of things, then I guess I’ll have a lot of free time on my hands this weekend!”

“What were you doing in the – our trailer?” Taeil asks. He managed to catch himself, but he hopes Minjun didn’t notice his near slip of the tongue.

“Making sure your fridge was stocked for tomorrow, of course! I was actually just finishing up, do you guys want to take a look around?”

Jesus Christ, this might be the most enthusiastic man Taeil’s ever met. It doesn’t sit right with him.

“Maybe once you’re finished,” Taeil says, and that visibly throws Minjun off.

“Alright,” Minjun says. “Let me grab my keys…” he pops back into the trailer for about a minute. He waves his keys and cellphone cheerfully at them when he reappears, jumping off the top of the steps again. “All yours!” He clearly expects them to go immediately inside, but Taeil waits instead until Minjun is nearly out of sight before finally ushering Chenle and Jisung into the trailer.

“That was weird,” Chenle says. Understatement of the year, Taeil thinks. If even the kids think it’s weird, something’s definitely off.

Taeil considers his options briefly before he calls Jungwoo. Out of the rest of his team, Jungwoo’s the least likely to overreact to what Taeil’s about to tell him, he thinks. He’s proven right when Jungwoo listens to Taeil’s story quietly, and calmly agrees to look for Minjun as he leaves. He offers to get Sicheng on the lookout without Taeil having to ask, which is also a relief. It’s only when he hangs up that Taeil takes in his surroundings. It’s nicer than he would have expected, but there are no signs of someone having done any work in it recently.

“Hey, the drinks in here are already cold,” Jisung says from the small kitchenette. He’s got the fridge propped open, and is holding a bottle of water in his hand.

“He didn’t say he was stocking the fridge. He said he was making sure it was already full,” Taeil points out, mostly to keep the kids from freaking out. “I’m sure he was just excited,” he adds when Jisung gives him a doubtful look.

“He was weird,” Chenle repeats. Taeil doesn’t want to tell the kid he’s wrong, because his instincts are agreeing with him. Avoiding the issue is probably his best option at the moment, unfortunately.

So Taeil makes a show out of stretching his arms above his head before he says, “You guys ready to go back?”

“Yes,” Jisung says, putting the water bottle back in the fridge. “Hey, do you think we can stop and get some candy on the way back to the hotel?”

 

***

 

Taeil’s been conditioned by now to react to any and all abrupt noises, so it’s not really a surprise he jolts awake so hard he falls out of bed when the door to his hotel room cracks open around seven am. The door swings all the way open and what sounds like two sets of feet rush towards him almost immediately after he hits the ground, so he supposes that whoever broke in doesn’t have any ill intentions towards him.

He's proven right when he opens his eyes to see Donghyuck and Jeno peering down at him.

“Are you okay?” Jeno asks worriedly. “We didn’t mean to scare you!”

Taeil groans and accepts the hand Donghyuck holds out to pull himself to a sitting position. “When you’ve been in my field as long as I have, you react to any sudden noises,” he says around a yawn. “How did you even get in here?”

Donghyuck and Jeno exchange a guilty look. “We got Jeno to get a copy of your room key from the front desk,” Donghyuck says sheepishly.

“Nope, I don’t want to know,” Taeil decides. “Okay. _Why_ did you do that?”

Jeno’s eyes brighten behind his glasses. “We wanted to ask if you would take us to the festival grounds this morning before it starts like you did Lele and Jisungie last night,” he wheedles.

Taeil shakes his head. “No.” He doesn’t even need to think about this one. “Yukhei shouldn’t have brought Chenle and Jisung with him last night, and he got yelled at by both Taeyong and Kun over it. Like, Kun interrupted his date to yell at him when he found out about it, and I got a lecture about how I’m supposed to _keep you guys safe_ instead of _encouraging bad decisions_ or whatever. Absolutely not.”

“I told you we should have asked Yukhei,” Donghyuck tells Jeno.

“There’s no way he would have agreed if he got yelled about it,” Jeno argues back.

“No one would agree after last night,” Taeil tells them. “Go away so I can shower since you already woke me up.”

Jeno rolls to his feet easily, but Donghyuck stays crouched on the ground giving Taeil a considering look. “I have a question,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell us that Tennie’s boyfriend was your boss? Isn’t that something we should have known?”

Taeil feels a blush crawling up his neck, even if he doesn’t have a reason to be embarrassed. “I didn’t know,” he mumbles.

“You didn’t know who your boss was,” Donghyuck says flatly.

“No. I didn’t know Ten was his boyfriend. No one knew. Well, except for Doyoung,” he adds, thinking back to the day Doyoung had practically stormed their office, looking mad enough to tear down their building with his bare hands.

Donghyuck’s entire face lights up, and Taeil gets the distinct idea that he’s just created a monster. “Thank you, Taeilie!” he chirps, leaning forward to press a quick kiss to Taeil’s cheek. He jumps to his feet immediately afterwards, and practically drags Jeno from the room – presumably in search of either Doyoung or the rest of Dream. Either way, Taeil’s probably going to hear about this from Doyoung later too.

 

***

 

If someone asked Taeil if he was hiding from Doyoung right now, he would say no. He’s worked in law enforcement for years, most of them for the government. There’s not much he’s afraid of anymore.

If someone asked Taeil if he was hiding from Doyoung right now, and he said no, he would be lying through his teeth. Jaehyun had been pouty during their morning debrief, saying that the Dream kids were giving Doyoung a hard time and putting him in a bad mood, complete with a sulky look sent in Taeil’s direction. The thing is, though, he’s pretty sure that if he waits long enough, Doyoung will find something else to be annoyed about and forget that Taeil accidentally gave the kids new ammunition to use against him in their seemingly never-ending quest to make Doyoung go gray prematurely.

It hadn’t taken the team long to scatter in different directions after Taeyong had handed out their various festival passes and dismissed them for the morning. Taeil finds himself walking through the grounds with Johnny by his side, though, and it’s a struggle to think about the daunting task in front of them instead of what Donghyuck had said to him the afternoon before.

He’s clearly doing a terrible job at it, though, considering that Johnny raps him gently on the side of the head with his knuckles and asks in this disgustingly soft tone of voice if Taeil’s holding up okay with everything he has to do this weekend. The look in Johnny’s eyes when Taeil looks up at him has him wondering if the kid might be right – but he shakes that thought as quickly as it comes, because of how ridiculous it is.

“Just a lot happening at once,” Taeil says. Johnny hums and wraps an arm around Taeil’s shoulders. “Did you hear about what happened last night?”

“The part about a couple of the kids playing Xuxi for a fool? Or the part about you guys finding some dude who claimed to be a festival worker in your trailer?”

“It’s so weird when people say it’s my trailer, too,” Taeil mutters. “But yeah, the second one. What do you think?”

Johnny stops walking; since he’s still got his arm looped around Taeil, he’s forced to come to a stop as well. “I think you know what I’m about to say,” he says. And yeah, Taeil’s expecting it when he says, “It doesn’t matter what I thought, I haven’t met this dude yet. What do _you_ think? Trust your insticts.”

“Something about him and the situation in general felt very odd to me.”

“See? There you go,” Johnny says, walking forward again. “We’re all supposed to keep an eye out for people acting suspicious, right? Well, you found one already.”

Taeil shrugs as best as he can, scanning the crowd in front of them as they get closer to the backstage area. The very first act isn’t set to go on stage for another seven hours, and the main gates won’t open to the crowd for at least two more hours, but there’s already a sea of people there. Most of them are wearing headsets, which should at least make it easier to determine who’s supposed to be back there and who isn’t. The rest of their team is somewhere in the crowd of people, as is Dream. (Well, probably. They could already be at their trailer, but Taeil thinks it’s more likely that they’re scoping out the backstage area themselves like they had tried to talk Taeil into letting them do this morning.)

They walk the rest of the way to the backstage area in companionable silence. Johnny has to let go of Taeil briefly while they duck under the ropes set up to be a temporary barrier between the restricted access area and the rest of the festival, but puts his arm back in place almost before Taeil’s even standing up straight again.

“Hey, isn’t that Mark? And Donghyuck?” Johnny asks, pointing towards the corners of one of the tents set up between the immediate stage area and the artist trailers. Taeil has to crane his neck a little to see, but once he does – yeah, it’s Mark and Donghyuck. Donghyuck appears to be comforting Mark, who has his head buried in his hands.

Taeil makes a noise that probably counts as a yes in some alternate universe as he ducks out from Johnny’s hold to rush over to the kids. Donghyuck’s talking in quiet tones to Mark when he comes to a stop in front of them, and he doesn’t even look up until Taeil says their names.

Mark’s eyes are red-rimmed, and Taeil’s heart breaks a little at the sight. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

Mark makes a distressed noise and ducks his head into the juncture of Donghyuck’s neck and shoulder. Donghyuck pulls him closer and looks at Taeil fiercely. “His ‘idol’ is here,” he says venomously enough that it catches Taeil off-guard. “I guess he’s the MC this weekend or whatever. So Mark went to go say hi, and that _asshole_ – god, I’m so mad right now,” he seethes.

“Take your time,” Taeil says encouragingly.

“Breathe,” Johnny adds.

Donghyuck nods, visibly taking a deep breath. “Okay. So Mark’s idol is here like I said, as the MC for the festival. And Mark saw him in one of the concession tents and went to say hi. And then that asshole told him to fuck off and leave him be, because he didn’t give a fuck about him or any of us ‘rookie artists’ and that he would be happy if we all completely disappeared.”

Taeil’s eyes widen. “Is that exactly what he said?” he asks carefully. He doesn’t want to distress Mark any further, but if whoever the MC is this weekend actually said that, well…that would be something they need to take a close look at.

Mark lifts his head up and nods almost robotically. “Yeah,” he croaks out. “Trust me. I’ll never forget it.”

Taeil opens his arms invitingly, and Mark doesn’t hesitate before detaching himself from Donghyuck to fling himself against Taeil. Donghyuck makes a slightly affronted noise before joining in. And if Mark makes a sniffling noise and rubs his face against Taeil’s shoulder with a choked-off sob, well, that’s something Taeil will never tell a soul.

He’s trying to find the right words to say to comfort Mark when he hears a voice above the crowd calling out for Johnny. He looks up, and sees that Johnny’s already standing on his tip toes to scan the crowd.

“Is that Sicheng?” Taeil asks, as the voice shouts for Johnny again.

“Yeah,” Johnny confirms, waving his arm up in the air so Sicheng can see them. When Sicheng stumbles to a halt in front of Johnny, he’s red faced and panting.

“Johnny – oh good, Taeil’s here too – you guys need to follow me,” he huffs out.

“Is it important?” Taeil asks. He’d really rather not leave Mark until he has to. Or get Mark to move before he’s ready, either.

Sicheng nods rapidly. “Yes,” he says, face serious. Sicheng’s the type of person who tends to downplay things until the brink of disaster, so if he says it’s important…

“We have to go,” Johnny says, voicing the thoughts in Taeil’s head. He looks down at where Mark is still clinging to Taeil, and says, “Hey. Mark. Want a piggy back ride?”

Mark pulls himself away from Taeil to look up at Johnny. “I’m not a little kid,” he says, trying to sound grown up even though his voice is still wavering.

“If he says no, can I get one?” Donghyuck asks Johnny pleadingly.

“Hey,” Mark whines, shoving Donghyuck, “no, I want it.”

Johnny grins at him and ducks down to allow Mark to jump on his back. Once he’s got a good grip on the kid, Sicheng rolls his eyes and stalks off, clearly expecting them all to follow him – which they do, of course.

Taeil’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t for Sicheng to lead them to a small secluded area about twenty feet from the stage, where Jaemin and Renjun are waiting for them. They look anxious, Taeil notices. “Show them what you found,” Sicheng encourages.

Renjun doesn’t hesitate before kneeling down and pulling up one of the panels on the edge of the rubber matting meant to protect the fragile grass from the foot traffic of the festival. “Jaemin noticed this, not me,” Renjun says, fighting with the mat. It comes off with enough force to knock him off of his feet and reveals a perfectly square concrete reinforced hole, about three feet deep and three feet wide.

A concrete hole that is definitely not supposed to be in what is usually an open field fifty one weeks out of the year.

Taeil looks up and meets Sicheng’s eyes, seeing the horror he knows is on his own face reflected right back at him. “We have to find Taeyong. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked this chapter! the drama, she's coming...
> 
> (and i refuse to apologize for the one (1) self-indulgent scene i've included in this fic so far, tbh!!)
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/zeromiles5) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/zeromiles5) if you're so inclined!


	6. Six

The problem with running an investigation during such a large event like this one is that there are always people around. Even at one am, there are some stragglers behind the scenes who haven’t retired to their hotel for the night, and it makes looking for evidence – in this case, more concrete reinforced holes such as the one Jaemin had found that morning – a real pain in the ass. Especially since Taeyong had told them not to act suspiciously before leaving to take a phone call.

That had been an hour and a half ago. At this point, Taeil doesn’t think he’s coming back tonight.

“At this point, I almost think we need a distraction,” Yukhei says, toeing at the edge of the rubber matting furthest from the stage. “We’re going to draw a lot of attention if we start ripping these covers up.”

“I hate to admit it, but he’s right,” Sicheng says with a sigh, ignoring Yukhei’s offended yelp.

Yuta snorts. “Yeah, because that won’t look suspicious or anything.”

“I didn’t say we should do it, I just said he was right,” Sicheng argues.

“What about asking the security guards to clear everyone out?” Jaehyun asks.

Yuta gives Jaehyun an incredulous look. “Seriously? That would be the definition of suspicious. Why am I surrounded by idiots?”

“Good question,” Johnny says.

“Um. You’re clearly included in those idiots,” Yuta tells him.

Taeil sighs and sits down on the edge of the grass, eventually flopping down onto his back. He’s had an extremely long, stressful day and wants to do nothing but go back to the hotel and sleep. Shower, too, but sleep is more important. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that might happen anytime soon. Yukhei’s dead set on checking under every single panel of the rubber matting backstage, and Taeil knows he won’t rest until he either manages to do so or Taeyong returns and tells them all to go to bed.

“You look like you got hit by a truck,” Jungwoo says, sitting down next to him.

Taeil shifts so he can rest his head on Jungwoo’s thigh. “Feel like it,” he admits, closing his eyes as Jungwoo begins to thread his fingers through Taeil’s hair.

Jungwoo coos softly at him. “No one would blame you if you went back to the hotel to get some sleep. We all know how hard you’ve been working.”

“Mmm,” Taeil agrees, making no effort to move. Jungwoo’s hands in his hair are oddly soothing…

“—doing?” Johnny’s saying. Weird; Taeil hadn’t heard him come over. He considers opening his eyes, but it seems like a lot of effort.

“He’s sleeping,” Jungwoo hisses, and that causes Taeil’s eyes to fly open.

“No I’m not,” he protests, blinking rapidly to clear his vision so he can meet Johnny’s eyes. Johnny looks annoyed, but his gaze softens once he makes eye contact with Taeil.

Jungwoo laughs, but it’s not mocking. “You were, but it’s okay,” he says.

Johnny looks away from Taeil to glare at Jungwoo, and Taeil knows he’s missed something. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” Johnny says.

“Johnny’s got a stick up his ass,” Jungwoo says at the same time.

Taeil tilts his head back to look at Jungwoo. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” Jungwoo answers. “Probably because he’d rather he had his d –”

“That’s enough,” Johnny says sharply.

Taeil sits up enough that he can look between the two of them. Johnny looks downright pissed, instead of just annoyed, while Jungwoo looks smug. Like a cat who got the cream or whatever that analogy is supposed to be. “Anyone want to explain what’s going on here?”

Johnny visibly clenches his jaw before shaking his head briefly. “Taeil, Taeyong is back. He wants to talk to everyone before we send you back to the hotel for the night.”

Taeil stumbles to his feet. “Okay. You guys coming with me?”

“I need to talk to Jungwoo here for a minute,” Johnny answers. “Tell Taeyong we’ll be along shortly.”

“M’kay,” Taeil says sleepily. He makes his way over to where Taeyong and the rest are more by following the sound of voices than by sight, choosing to keep his eyes half closed most of the time. He ends up stumbling right into Sicheng, who steadies him before he can fall to the ground because Sicheng is an angel.

“Taeil? You with us?” Taeyong asks, sounding amused.

“Think so,” he says, yawning. “Johnny ‘n Jungwoo are talking though.” He leans his head on Sicheng’s shoulder, because Sicheng is close and warm; Sicheng laughs a little and lets him.

“Sounds like something I don’t have time to deal with right now, I’ll catch them up later,” Taeyong says decisively. “Alright, guys, listen up. So after I reported what we found and what we were told today, the main HQ got _another_ threat in, this one with a return address that can be linked to Park Hyunwoo – you know, the MC of this festival? So that, combined with what he said to Mark earlier, is enough that the higher ups have decided to bring him in for questioning. He’ll likely be picked up first thing tomorrow morning, they’re trying to keep it quiet.”

Taeil frowns, suddenly wide awake. Something about what Taeyong just said doesn’t seem to fit.

The low level grumbling making its way through the rest of the team would indicate that they feel the same way.

“I don’t like it,” Yuta eventually says.

“Me either,” Taeil agrees.

Taeyong nods. “Honestly, guys? Same. It feels too neat, like everything got wrapped up in a neat little bow for us. Real life doesn’t work that way. I get that they need to question him, but I don’t think it’s over.”

But it doesn’t matter if Taeyong doesn’t think it’s over. If main headquarters thinks they’ve got their guy, then they’ll pull their team off the case without a second thought. It’s happened before, but never with the stakes as high as these.

Jaehyun voices what Taeil’s sure everyone’s thinking when he says, “So where does that leave us?”

Taeyong blows out a slow breath. “They agree that it seems a bit too neat, so they’ve told us to stay here and continue the investigation until an official arrest is made.”

“Oh, thank god,” Taeil says, slumping against Sicheng. “Can I go get some sleep now?”

Taeyong does laugh at him this time. “Yeah, Taeil, you can go get some sleep now.”

 

***

 

Doyoung is waiting for him in the hotel lobby the next morning. It reminds Taeil of the day they first officially met, and it would make him smile if it wasn’t for the serious look on Doyoung’s face.

“Walk with me?” Doyoung asks.

“Sure,” Taeil agrees easily. “Where are the kids?”

“Ten and Kun took them to the festival grounds about half an hour ago. I wanted to wait for you.”

Doyoung obviously has something on his mind, but he’s silent for a few minutes after they leave the hotel. Finally, when they’re about halfway to the site of the festival, he says, “So Kun filled me in this morning on what happened last night.”

Ah. “I figured he would,” Taeil tells him.

“I have a really weird request,” Doyoung continues. “I know I said I wanted to be upfront with the kids about everything that was going on, but I don’t want them to know about this. I would hate for Mark to feel like he got his idol arrested – or brought in for questioning, whatever. Same difference, really.”

Taeil winces. He hadn’t even considered that. “Well, Taeyong did say to keep this quiet,” he says firmly. “I think that means keeping them out of the loop until an actual arrest is made this time is fine.”

“Okay,” Doyoung says, relaxing. “Good. Tell that to everyone else, will you?”

“Will do,” Taeil promises. “Got any plans for today?”

“Ugh,” Doyoung says. Loudly. When Taeil glances over at him, his face is dark. “I’m trying to figure out how to lose this fucking assistant the festival saddled me with. He hovers around me ninety-nine percent of the time but disappears without a trace whenever Ten’s around. It’s so fucking weird. I told the organizers I wanted him reassigned or whatever, but they told me I didn’t have a choice and it seems like a lot of bullshit to me.”

“Minjun?” Taeil asks quickly. So much had happened yesterday that he’d forgotten to follow up with Doyoung about whether the festival organizers really _had_ given him an assistant for the weekend or not.

“I forgot you met him already,” Doyoung says.

“Let’s not talk about that,” Taeil says cajolingly as they approach the festival gates. “Let’s talk about Minjun. You said he’s hovering?”

“He literally tried to follow me into the damn bathroom yesterday, Taeil. It’s so weird. He also asked where you were like three times. You, specifically, and not anyone else. I don’t think he’s met Jeno or Mark at all, but he didn’t seem to care about that.”

“Me specifically? Like, by name?”

“Yes?” Doyoung says. He sounds annoyed now, like he can’t believe Taeil’s this stupid or something. “I literally just told you that.”

Here’s the thing, though: Taeil knows he didn’t tell Minjun his name, and he doesn’t think Chenle or Jisung refered to him by name while Minjun was in earshot, either. He debates telling Doyoung that, but since he’s not one hundred percent certain that Minjun never got his name, he decides against it. “Hey, I’m a cop. Kind of. Paranoia comes with the territory.”

Doyoung laughs at him. “Jaehyun isn’t paranoid.”

“Jaehyun is stupidly fearless,” Taeil retorts, coming to a stop in front of the security checkpoint that leads to the backstage area. A young woman is standing with the security guards today, clutching a clipboard close to her body.

She steps in front of the guards and peers over her glasses at them. “Passes.”

“And who are you?” Doyoung asks her.

“The main assistant to the promoter of this festival,” she says, sharply. “Passes. Now.”

Doyoung’s still glaring at her suspiciously, but Taeil fishes his pass out of his pocket and hands it over to her. The sooner this is over with, the better, he thinks. He’s not prepared for her to eye his pass critically and then hand it back to him with a dismissive noise. “You know I can have you arrested, right? I _should_ have you arrested,” she says.

“Excuse me?” Taeil asks.

“You’re attempting to enter a restricted area with a fraudulent pass. That’s grounds for a trespassing charge. Forgery, maybe. As if anyone would believe that _you_ are a performer.”

Taeil’s jaw about drops to the ground. “I’m literally standing right here with my manager,” he says slowly, gesturing towards Doyoung.

“Likely story,” the woman scoffs.

Doyoung steps forward and practically shoves his pass in her face. “Don’t you know who I am?” he asks, as she rips the pass from his hands to examine it.

Taeil watches as her face pales. “Manager Kim,” she stutters, her grip on Doyoung’s pass faltering. She almost drops it, but catches herself at the last moment. “I didn’t realize.”

“I should report you to your boss for this,” Doyoung says mockingly. “Are you going to let us through sometime today, or do I need to get someone who actually knows what they’re doing out here?”

“You can go through,” she says, stepping aside. She’s still pale and watches them warily. “What?” she asks, when Doyoung steps through the gates and turns to look at her expectantly.

“You have my pass,” he says, like it’s obvious. “And while I have you here, can you either reassign that bullshit assistant you assigned me for the weekend, or at least tell him to stop breathing down my neck every second? He’s driving me crazy and is of no help to me.”

The woman nods quickly as she drops Doyoung’s pass into his outstretched palm. “I’ll talk to him. Enjoy your day,” she says weakly.

Doyoung grabs Taeil by the arm and practically drags him back towards the artist trailers. “What the fuck was that?” he hisses.

Taeil sighs. “Suspicious, that’s what. There’s no way she would have let me through if you weren’t there.” He has a lot of questions about what just happened – who was that woman, why was she waiting there, who was she looking for, what about Taeil’s pass made her so instantly convinced it was fraudulent – but no answers, and no way to find them. The only thing he’s certain of is that he doesn’t like this.

“She was on one hell of a power trip,” Doyoung grumbles, letting go of Taeil’s arm as they begin weaving between the various trailers. “Do you think I should let her boss know what happened?”

Taeil hums contemplatively. If she was just a rogue employee, her boss would obviously need to know. But his instincts are telling him that it might be more than that, and a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Johnny is reminding him to trust those instincts. If there is something more there, then alerting her boss might escalate the situation in ways they’re not prepared for. “I think that’s a decision you need to make on your own,” Taeil says carefully.

Doyoung eyes him critically. “So you think it was more than just someone on a power trip too, huh,” he sighs.

Taeil shrugs, kind of helplessly. “I obviously don’t know for sure, but my instincts say maybe.”

Doyoung nods firmly. “Alright. I’ll leave it alone for now, unless Minjun spends the entire day breathing down my neck again. If that situation doesn’t get better then I’m going to the promoter and festival management first thing tomorrow.”

“Sounds good.”

 

***

 

Just before sunset, when Taeil’s walking with Yuta and Jeno in search of food, he sees an unfortunately familiar shock of bright red hair at the edges of his peripheral vision. “Damn it,” he mutters.

Minjun must spot them at the same time Taeil spots him, because he comes bounding over almost immediately. “Hi guys!” he chirps. “What are you up to?”

“Food,” Jeno says bluntly. Taeil gives him an odd look – he’s never seen Jeno be anything but unfailingly kind and polite to _anyone_ before.

“Oh, yes, food is…good,” Minjun says, clearly stumbling over his words. “I don’t think we’ve met before,” he says to Yuta next.

Yuta gives Minjun his brightest smile, the one that he only uses when he’s about to bullshit someone. The last time Taeil saw that exact grin, it had cost Jungwoo five hundred dollars. “I’m no one important, just a member of Dream’s crew. I’m escorting these two to the food tent.”

Annoyance flits across Minjun’s face, gone as quickly as it appeared – so quickly that Taeil doubts that Jeno, whose job doesn’t require paying close attention to people, noticed it. He knows without a doubt that Yuta noticed it though. “As the temporary assistant to Dream’s manager, don’t you think you should give me your name?”

“Nah,” Yuta says, grin never faltering. “Like I said. I’m not important.”

“Well, how about I go with you guys to get some food?”

“I don’t know,” Jeno says hesitantly, looking at Taeil, then Yuta. The kid is all but begging them with his eyes to get rid of Minjun, and Taeil wants to know why. Not even on an investigative level, but on a personal one.

That’s probably why Taeil says “We’re meeting up with Ten, actually,” after he remembers what Doyoung had said that morning about Minjun disappearing anytime Ten was around.

Sure enough, Minjun’s eyes widen almost comically. “Oh, never mind then,” he says airily. “I’ll catch up with you later! Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, Doyoung knows how to get in touch with me!”

“What a weird little man,” Yuta says as they watch Minjun scurry away.

“He gives me the creeps,” Jeno declares. “Jisungie said he gives him the creeps too. Why can’t Doyoung get rid of him?”

“He’s trying,” Taeil tells him.

Jeno makes a face at that. “He should try harder.”

Kids, Taeil thinks fondly.

“Okay, but are we actually going to find Ten?” Yuta asks, sounding excited at the prospect.

“Yeah, we are,” Taeil decides. Wherever Ten is, Kun is sure to be close at hand, and it probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea to update him on everything that’s happened today.

 

***

 

Nothing happens on Saturday. At all. There’s no weird interactions for anyone, no new suspicious discoveries, and even no Minjun.

Nothing happens on Saturday, and it’s really fucking unsettling.

 

***

 

The storm clouds that roll in early Sunday morning feel like an omen. Taeil doesn’t really believe in luck and superstition and other things of that sort – he can’t afford to with his job – but he can’t help feeling like the clouds are indicative of something going horribly pear-shaped today.

“Since when do you think things like that?” Sicheng asks, when Taeil tells him his thoughts over breakfast.

“Think positively instead!” Yukhei chimes in, just before shoving an entire piece of toast in his mouth.

Taeil rolls his eyes. “Sure, Yukhei, I’ll do just that.”

“It works for me!” Yukhei protests.

“You and I are _very_ different people,” Taeil tells him seriously.

When Yukhei pouts, Taeil wants to take it back. Yukhei’s sad face has that effect on people. He doesn’t get the chance though before Jaehyun says, “Ignore him, Yukhei. He’s just scared that he might actually have to go on stage and pretend to be a member of a teenage boyband today.”

Taeil groans and drops his head onto the table. He’d actually almost forgotten about that aspect of it; he’s been convinced for so long that they would catch the person behind the threats long before that became a possibility. Now, however, it’s not looking so good.

“What’s wrong with Taeil?” he hears Johnny ask a heartbeat before he feels strong fingers against the nape of his neck.

“Performance anxiety,” Jaehyun snickers. Johnny hums and digs his fingers into the knot that seems to have taken residence permanently at the base of neck, right at the top of his spine, and Taeil can’t bite his lip fast enough to keep a tiny moan from slipping out.

Johnny’s hands leave him instantly, like he’s been burned by Taeil’s skin or something equally implausible. He hears Jaehyun snickering, probably at Johnny, but doesn’t lift his head back up off the table until he hears Kun clearing his throat somewhere nearby.

Kun’s standing behind Sicheng with a serious expression on his face. “I have news.”

It turns out that Park Hyunwoo had been released from custody the previous afternoon, mere hours after he was first taken in. He’d denied any and all knowledge of the threats made against the festival, and the evidence linking him to the most recent threat had been flimsy at best. So not only had he been released, he’s back at the festival to resume his MC duties on this final day, because there was no reason to keep him away any longer.

“You’re kidding me,” Johnny says flatly.

Kun shakes his head, his mouth pressed into a flat line. “It’s not surprising, since we all kind of agreed that we weren’t sure he was responsible, but that’s what’s happening right now. I’m stunned that they didn’t release him on the condition that he stay away from the festival today, but it is what it is now and we have to deal with it.”

“On that pleasant note, I’m going to go get ready to go to the festival. I have to stick close to the kids today to avoid blowing my cover,” Taeil says, shoving his chair back from the table.

“Remember to keep an eye out for anything, and I mean literally anything, that seems out of place,” Kun reminds him. Taeil wants to retort that he knows how to do his job, but anyone with eyes could see how anxious Kun is right now and that’s the only thing that keeps him from making a sarcastic remark. He’s clearly at the end of his rope.

They’re all probably about at the end of their ropes by now, Taeil thinks.

 

***

 

The woman from Friday is waiting at the gates again when Taeil and Doyoung arrive at the festival, this time with the rest of Dream in tow. She makes a big show out of inspecting Taeil’s pass once again, but eventually lets him go through without making a scene. Or, well, a bigger scene than pointedly inspecting his pass had created.

“What was her problem?” Chenle asks once they’re out of her earshot.

“She’s on a power trip or something,” Doyoung says smoothly. “Come on, let’s go to our trailer. The stylists will be there soon to figure out what you’re going to wear on stage today.”

Ten comes by the trailer shortly after, alone for what’s probably the first time since they arrived Wednesday afternoon. “Wanna hear something weird?” he asks. “There was a lady standing with the security guards today, and she almost didn’t let Yuta in. Said she thought his pass was fake or whatever, and only gave in when I said I was gonna call Doyoung to clear it up.”

“So exactly what happened to me the other day?” Taeil asks, just to be sure.

Ten’s eyes widen. “Yeah! I forgot you told us about that happening. It was literally exactly like that. Weird, huh? What’s so different about yours and Yuta’s passes that some random lady is so suspicious of them?”

“I don’t know,” Taeil answers, rubbing his forehead. It’s just another question to add to the list he’s been accumulating in his head over this weekend of questions he’s sure will never be truly answered. “Everything about this is exhausting,” he adds, thinking out loud.

He’s caught off guard by Donghyuck plastering himself to his side and wrapping him in a hug. “Hugs make me feel better, sometimes,” Donghyuck says. “Is this helping you recharge a little?”

“Yeah, it is,” Taeil admits, smiling down at him. “Thanks.”

 

***

 

T-minus thirty minutes until Dream’s scheduled to go on stage, and Taeil hasn’t seen or heard from anyone on his team for almost an hour now. He’d been certain that they would all come by to get a close up look at his stage clothes and makeup, so their absences are unexpected.

“You know what else is weird?” Doyoung says, after Taeil vocalizes his thoughts. “I haven’t seen Minjun all day. He’s spent the last three days practically shadowing me, but then he disappears on the day I might have actually needed him.”

“Good riddance,” Renjun calls from where he’s slumped on the couch against Jisung and Mark.

“I don’t disagree, but I don’t like it anyways,” Doyoung answers.

Taeil doesn’t like it either. Minjun’s been acting oddly all festival long, ever since Taeil originally encountered him Wednesday night – wait.

Wait a second.

It might be a coincidence that both Taeil and Yuta have met Minjun and subsequently had the validity of their passes questioned.

But coincidences are yet another thing that Taeil doesn’t believe in.

“Doyoung?” Taeil asks as casually as he can. “Um. Is there maybe a database where the people who organized the festival can see the names of everyone they’ve issued a backstage area pass to?”

Doyoung scrunches his nose as he thinks. “It’s likely,” he says after a moment. “Why?”

“I need to go,” Taeil answers, standing up so quickly that the chair he’s sitting on topples to the ground. “Shit, sorry, I – I need to find someone. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, go on stage without me.”

“Are you sure you’re not just trying to get out of going on stage with them?” Doyoung asks shrewdly.

“Cross my heart,” Taeil promises.

But Taeil doesn’t even make it ten feet from Dream’s trailer before he’s stopped by a frantic looking Jaemin. “I can’t find Ten anywhere,” he says.

“He’s probably with Kun,” Taeil says soothingly.

Jaemin shakes his head rapidly. “No. I was with him in the food tent to grab some water, and that lady from this morning came up to him and asked if Ten would go with her because she had something important to discuss with him. He told me to wait for him there, but it’s been fifteen minutes and I can’t find him _anywhere_ and something’s not right,” he rushes out.

“Breathe,” Taeil says quickly. Jaemin’s on the verge of working himself up into a panic attack, and that’s the last thing they need right now. Once Jaemin’s breathing steadies, Taeil tilts his head so that he can look Jaemin directly in the eyes. “I’ll find him. I promise. I have my phone, so if you haven’t heard from me in ten minutes, have Doyoung let Taeyong or someone know what I’m doing, okay?”

“Okay,” Jaemin promises.

The sun pops out from behind the clouds for the first time all day as Taeil breaks into a run. It feels like its mocking him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> johnny: stop flirting with taeil!! you don't even like him that way!!  
> jungwoo: hmm :) that sounds like something someone who's jealous would say :)  
> johnny: >:(
> 
> ANYWAYS. two chapters left!! i'm hoping to have one (or both!) of them out next week, but i'm an american who will be travelling across the country for thanksgiving this week, so all i can promise is that it will be up asap :(
> 
> thank you for reading! come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zeromiles5) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/zeromiles5)!


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know if you think i missed a tag that needs to be added!

Taeil’s first instinct is to head for the area that’s been serving as the main hub for the festival organizers this weekend, since the woman who Ten had last been seen with had claimed to be the assistant to the promoter. The rational part of his brain tells him it’s too central of a location, though. Instead, he makes a beeline to the various temporary storage sheds on the fringes of the restricted area, far from where most people would be right now. One of the headliners of the festival is due on stage in less than half an hour; Taeil doubts that anyone who doesn’t absolutely have to be in this area right now is back here.

The area surrounding the storage sheds is deserted, as expected. There’s not a soul in sight. Even the sounds of the act scheduled to go on stage before Dream wrapping up their set is muted out here, nothing but faint snippets of noise floating through the air. His original plan was to open every shed to see if he could find something, as time consuming as that might have been, but he doesn’t have to – not when he can clearly hear voices coming from one of the storage sheds near the very end of the row.

“Ten?” Taeil shouts.

The voices cut off abruptly, but it doesn’t matter at this point. Taeil knows that whoever has Ten is nearby, and they know it too.

“Ten?” Taeil shouts again. This time, a loud clanging that sounds awfully like something solid bouncing off a metal wall rings out a second later, and that’s enough.

When Taeil wrenches open the door of the third storage shed from the end of the row, he’s not surprised to see Ten tied to a chair against the far wall. His stomach sinks anyways. Taeil gives him a quick onceover – his hair’s a mess, and the collar of his shirt torn, but he looks otherwise unharmed; most importantly, he only seems to be bound by his wrists – before turning to the other occupant of the shed.

“Minjun,” he says.

A slow smile spreads across Minjun’s face. “Agent Moon. What a surprise.”

“What, were you expecting someone else?” Taeil asks before he can help himself.

Minjun’s smile shifts into something that sends chills down Taeil’s spine. “Well, yeah,” he says, like it should be obvious. “It’s no big deal, though. I suspect Qian will be along shortly, as soon as he realizes this one is missing,” he adds, jerking his head carelessly in Ten’s direction. “We have some…unfinished business.”

Realization hits Taeil like a ton of bricks, and he’s almost surprised that his knees don’t give out from underneath him. “You have to be kidding me.”

“Why don’t you take a seat while we wait?” Minjun poses it as a question, but it’s clearly an order. It only becomes more obvious when he pulls a gun out from his waistband and waves it around in the air. And yet, despite the fact that Taeil’s completely unarmed, save a knife in his boot he knows he can’t get to at the moment, he hesitates. Minjun isn’t a large man. He’s smaller than Jeno – smaller than Yuta, probably – and Taeil could probably manage to disarm him.

But then he makes eye contact with Ten over Minjun’s shoulder, and Ten _winks._

Ten, admittedly, is probably more prepared than ninety-nine percent of civilians to be in a hostage situation between his athletic ability and his relationship with Kun. If Taeil knows Kun – and he _does_ , after two years, he knows how Kun operates – then Ten probably knows almost as well as Taeil himself does how to escape this situation unharmed. But a wink? That feels like someone who’s simply biding their time.

So Taeil makes a show of shrinking back from the gun and allowing Minjun to lead him over to the wall. “You’ll have to sit on the floor, I’m afraid,” Minjun laughs, shoving Taeil’s shoulder so he’s forced to turn around while his hands are bound behind his back, just like Ten’s. Taeil can’t see, but he assumes that Minjun puts the gun back into his waistband since he proceeds to grip one of Taeil’s wrists with each hand.

Taeil balls his hands into fists with his thumbs pressed together. To Minjun, it looks like he’s cooperating, but once he relaxes his hands he’ll have a lot of room to maneuver and free himself. Taeil casts a quick glance at Ten’s hands and notices that he likely did the same thing; the rope is loose around his wrists and the knot looks half untied already, despite the fact that he can’t have been bound for more than ten to fifteen minutes at this point.

Minjun turns Taeil around so his back is to the wall again, shrugs, and aims a kick directly against the inside of Taeil’s left knee, sending him crumpling to the ground. “Oops,” Minjun says.

Taeil grits his teeth to keep from screaming. The force of the kick dislocated his kneecap, which is what sent him to the ground, but the impact of him landing on the ground like he did forced his knee back into place; it’s very likely he’s torn _something_ in his knee. The muscles in his leg had tensed up as well, and his scar is hurting (because of course Minjun had taken aim at his previously injured leg), but it pales in comparison to his knee.

“Are you okay?” Ten asks worriedly. When Taeil manages to nod (he knows Ten sees through it, but what else can he say right now? No?), Ten lifts his head and glares at Minjun. “You’re fucking insane, you know that?” he spits out.

Minjun gives Ten an exaggerated pout. “If I am, it’s because your boyfriend ruined my life,” he says sweetly.

Taeil braces his hands behind his back against the floor and manages to pull himself to an upright position. His leg is twisted oddly in front of him and looking at it makes his stomach churn. But there’s nothing he can do about that now.

“Yeah, why don’t you tell me about that?” Taeil asks. “I get that you have something against Agent Qian, but why did you kidnap someone less than an hour before your grand scheme was set to go into action?”

Minjun visibly mouths the words _my grand scheme?_ before he suddenly lights up. “Oh, you mean the bomb threats,” he says, rubbing his chin. “Well, there’s no harm in telling you, since you’ll be leaving this shed in a body bag.”

Taeil wants to laugh, but he knows that aggravating the potentially unhinged man with a gun is a very _bad_ idea, one that could actually potentially get himself – or Ten – killed. Yes, he’s injured, but not so much that he couldn’t defend himself if he had to. Right now, though, his best bet is to keep Minjun’s focus elsewhere. “Well?” he prompts after a minute. “Are bombs about to go off?”

Minjun shakes his head, looking pleased with himself. “Nope. Those little things were meant as a distraction, because I knew that if everyone was focused on not being blown to bits no one else would really care if some choreographer disappeared.”

“So…the bomb threats were a decoy so you could kidnap Ten?” Taeil asks, just to confirm.

“Yeah, and they worked. You’re the only one who came looking for him, after all,” Minjun says gleefully, rocking back on his heels.

“Okay, but someone –” Ten starts, but Taeil cuts him off immediately. If Minjun thinks that no one else except Kun will notice that they’re both missing and will come looking for them, that works to their advantage. The ten minutes Taeil told Jaemin to wait before alerting anyone else to Ten’s disappearance have surely passed by now, which means that it probably won’t be too much longer until someone else on Taeil’s team finds them here. The more information he can pump out of Minjun before then, the better.

“I’m the only one who came looking for him, you’re right,” Taeil agrees quickly. He ignores the incredulous look Ten gives him and can only hope that Ten will figure out what he’s doing shortly. “But how did you know Ten would be here?”

Minjun stops moving immediately. “I don’t suppose you know this, but Qian put my father in jail. It tore apart my family. My mother divorced him and took most of his money and ended up telling me she didn’t want anything to do with me if I couldn’t accept the lies the government was feeding us about my father being a bad guy. I thought maybe if Qian died, he might have been exposed for the fraud he is and my father would be freed. But I miscalculated, and he showed up as I was trying to get into his old apartment. Suddenly I was a bad guy, too, and I went to jail for a year and a half. But,” he says, lighting up, “like a week after I got out I heard a voice I recognized from the night I got arrested on TV. It was a sign.”

“A sign?” Taeil prompts, shifting just enough that his right arm isn’t visible to Minjun so he can work on untying the knot around his wrists. It’s loose enough now that his hands are no longer balled into fists that he suspects he could wriggle one of his hands free without even untying the rope, but he’d rather see if he can’t untie it before taking that step.

“A sign that I could still expose Qian for the fraud he is, and if not, that I could at least make him suffer like I’ve suffered,” Minjun says decisively. “Do you know how easy it is to get people to do whatever you want if you have enough money and can tell them exactly what you want done?”

Taeil frowns. “I thought you said your mother had most of your family’s money and she no longer talked to you,” he points out, and watches as Minjun’s face darkens.

“After I got out of jail, my father had a friend of his contact me and give me access to a bank account he had hidden before his trial. He’d known my mother would pull the stunt she did. Women always lie.”

It seems much more likely to Taeil that Minjun’s father had hidden whatever bank accounts Minjun suddenly had access to in order to keep the money away from the government rather than Minjun’s mother.

“Alright, I understand now,” Taeil says, because he does. He just also understands that Minjun’s stated reasoning is a lie, but also that Minjun might not realize that himself. “So you had money, and you knew Ten worked for Dream because you saw him on TV? That still doesn’t explain why you decided to make a series of bomb threats against this very large, very public festival.”

“I literally already told you, you idiot,” Minjun scoffs. “I knew that if the cops and stuff were focused on bombs going off, they wouldn’t give a fuck what I did. I could have led Ten there to the center of the festival and shot him right now and no one would have cared because I wrote them a letter saying I’d be setting off bombs around that time. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you have to get someone’s attention if you want to distract them?”

Yeah, Taeil thinks, he’s heard that before.

The knot bounding his wrists gives and comes undone. The rope drops to the floor with a soft noise. It’s not loud enough to get Minjun’s attention, but Taeil doesn’t miss the way Ten’s head suddenly jerks in his direction. Ten’s gaze drops to the ground before snapping back up, and he nods to himself so slightly that Taeil wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t been paying attention.

“How did you find out I was a cop?” Taeil asks. It’s been bothering him since the second that Minjun had addressed him as _Agent Moon_.

“Ooh,” Minjun breathes out. “I gotta be honest, if you hadn’t found me in Dream’s trailer before the festival even started, I never would have known. You’re so tiny, and no one thinks someone that little can be a good spy or whatever you are, you know? But you acted like a cop whenever you found me. And those brats totally deferred to you. It was obvious.”

That’s exactly why Taeil both hates undercover assignments and is generally not very good at them. He tends to act exactly like the law enforcement official that he is whenever he’s caught off guard in an unfamiliar setting. It serves him well in most situations, so he’s never bothered to train that instinct out of him. Besides, undercover work isn’t nearly as common as one would generally expect.

“Do you hear something?” Minjun asks suddenly, cocking his head. Taeil closes his eyes so he can focus on listening for an unusual sound – and yeah, he definitely hears footsteps. Two sets, if he had to guess.

That’s why, when he opens his eyes again, he looks Minjun dead in the face and says, “I bet it was pretty obvious to you with all of the time you’ve spent around cops in the last couple of years.”

Minjun’s face goes red, then contorts with rage. “How dare you,” he shouts, reaching behind him. He’s clearly going for his gun, which Taeil had known was a risk he was taking, but now it means he has to act fast on his fucked up knee. He can’t guarantee it won’t give out on him again, but it’s looking like he’s going to have to test it.

Minjun gets a hand on his gun and aims it directly at Taeil’s chest. The sound of the safety clicking off and the gun being cocked echoes loudly throughout the nearly empty storage shed. “Any last words?” he asks, mockingly.

Taeil raises an eyebrow. “I’ll save those for a different time,” he says, just to see the confused expression on Minjun’s face. He’s not disappointed; Minjun’s grip on the gun falters, and it’s enough for Taeil to drop himself completely to the ground and use his now freed hands to roll away. Judging from the crashing noise that sounds an awful lot like a chair hitting a metal wall, Ten had thrown himself off his chair at about the same time. Or, at least, Taeil hopes he threw himself to the ground instead of making himself an easy target. A moving target, to be sure, but still an easy one.

“Wait!” Taeil hears Taeyong shouting. “Johnny!”

Taeil shifts just in time to look up and see the door to the shed fly the rest of the way open, followed my Johnny sprinting in. The noise startles Minjun again, who spins around to see the source of the noise and inadvertently winds up with his gun pointed directly at Johnny.

Taeil wants to scream out a warning or pull himself to his feet and put himself between Johnny and the gun or _something_. But his body can’t cooperate, and his tongue won’t, and he’s left to watch in horror as Johnny lunges at Minjun. The gun goes off as they hit the ground, Johnny landing on top of Minjun, but Taeil can’t see where the bullet wound up. The gun falls from Minjun’s hand a moment later, and Johnny shifts so he can kick it away.

“Stay down!” Johnny shouts, and Taeil’s not sure who he’s talking to. He could be addressing everyone in the area, Taeil and Ten included. He sounds okay, although that could be the adrenaline talking.

Taeyong comes skidding into the shed just then, face pale. Taeil knows that expression well; he’s equal parts scared and pissed off and will be until he finds out if Johnny just got himself shot or not. Only then will one of the two emotions win out over the other.

Johnny rolls off Minjun in a fluid motion, planting a knee into his lower back to keep him from getting up. “Taeyong?”

“I got it,” Taeyong grits out, pulling a pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket. Johnny waits until Taeyong’s snapped the handcuffs on Minjun, before finally pulling himself to his feet and stumbling over to Taeil.

“Are you okay?” Johnny asks, kneeling down next to him.

“What the fuck was that?” Taeil asks instead. Now that he knows Johnny isn’t about to die of a gunshot wound, he’s so angry that the words are hard to come by, but he manages.

“What do you mean?”

“You came in here, _unarmed_ , and tackled someone who was pointing a loaded gun at you, Johnny!”

Johnny shrugs. “I did, and I would do it again if I had to. Are you okay?” he asks again, urgent.

“Are _you_?” Taeil counters.

“Flesh wound. I’ll be fine,” Johnny answers, glancing down at his left arm. He’s wearing a dark shirt, but Taeil can see where the bicep shiny, wet with what is presumably Johnny’s blood.

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” Taeil shouts.

“I didn’t care about that. The only thing I cared about was making sure that you didn’t get shot in front of me again!” Johnny shouts back, standing up. “I couldn’t save you the first time, I wasn’t about to fail a second time,” he adds, trailing off into an almost whisper.

“You didn’t have to risk your life for me, you asshole, I knew the risks I was taking when I pissed off the armed lunatic!”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I did have to. I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise.”

“And why is that?” Taeil demands.

Johnny throws his hands up in the air. “Because I’m in love with you, you fucking idiot!”

Taeil’s jaw drops. “No. You’re not. Stop messing around. I’m being serious here.”

“Fuck off, Taeil, I’m being serious too. Ask literally anyone.”

Taeil tries to pull himself to his feet, momentarily forgetting about his recently injured knee. Johnny extends a hand to help him, but it’s too much, too fast. He realizes his knee’s giving out for the second time a second as his vision goes white around the edges, just before everything goes completely black.

 

***

 

Taeil wakes up in a hospital with Johnny sitting at his bedside for the second time in less than a year. Unlike last time, though, there are a ton of other people crammed into the room. Taeil also suspects that he’s not going to discover that three days had passed like he did last time, since nearly everyone that he can see clearly is wearing the same clothes they were when he saw them last. He can tell that he’s been under sedation, and he feels the kind of floaty that can only come with some really good painkillers, but he doesn’t feel hazy or completely out of it.

“You’re awake,” Johnny says, apparently having noticed how Taeil attempted to shift around in the confines of his hospital bed. The room falls silent immediately, all eyes turning to Taeil.

Taeil groans and raises a hand to his face to attempt to shield his eyes from the bright lights of the hospital room. “What happened? Is everyone here?”

“Doyoung and Jaehyun are in the waiting room with the kids, but everyone else is here,” Yuta says from where he’s perched on the arm of the chair Johnny’s sitting in. “What do you remember?”

“I remember _everything_ ,” Taeil says firmly, turning his head to look directly at Johnny as he says it. Johnny’s blush in return is gratifying.

Yuta looks between the two of them suspiciously. “Something happened,” he says.

“Not now,” Taeyong declares, pushing through the crowd of bodies in the room until he’s alone at the foot of Taeil’s bed. “Taeil, it’s been about six hours since you passed out. You completely tore your ACL, but you’ve already had surgery and it was successful. The doctors seem to think you’ll only need crutches for like two weeks, so it could have been a lot worse.”

“You’ll have to go back to desk duty for a while, though,” Kun says apologetically.

Taeil shrugs. He figured as much, and it’s one thing to be confined to his desk while he’s healing. It’s another thing entirely to still be stuck there months after he’s been cleared to resume all physical activity.

“What about Ten? Johnny? How hurt are they?”

“Johnny had to get stitches in his shoulder,” Taeyong says, shooting the man in question an icy glare, “but Ten is completely fine. Maybe some bruising on his wrists from the rope, but that’s it.”

Taeil closes his eyes. “And Minjun?” he asks, not sure he wants to hear the answer. Yes, Minjun had confessed to him and Ten, but it wasn’t an official one. If Minjun remains silent after being taken into official custody, the only evidence they have against him is Taeil’s word and it might not be enough to hold up in a trial.

“Complete confession, including the names of his accomplices,” Kun says, his voice suddenly sounding a lot closer. When Taeil opens his eyes again, Kun’s now standing next to Taeyong at the foot of the bed, looking somewhat apologetic. “It turns out that the woman who gave you and Yuta a hard time at the security checkpoints was working with him and granted Minjun access to a file that had the personal information of everyone the restricted area passes had been granted to. That’s how they identified you both and why they tried to kick you out. I don’t know if they realized that you two weren’t the only agents embedded in the festival, but that was the thinking there apparently.”

“So it’s over?”

“It’s over,” Kun confirms.

Taeil nods decisively. “Alright. Good. But, um…”

“You want us to leave so you can talk to Johnny?” Taeyong asks knowingly.

Taeil smiles up at him. “Please?”

“I can only promise five minutes,” Taeyong warns, but he’s already beginning to hustle everyone out of the room. Yuta practically has to be dragged out and makes Taeil promise to fill him in soon, but before long the door’s closed firmly and Taeil’s left alone with Johnny.

Johnny, who says he loves him.

Johnny, who’s refusing to meet Taeil’s eyes now that they’re alone.

Taeil figures that if he waited for Johnny to break the silence, they’d probably wind up staring at each other (or anywhere but each other, in Johnny’s case) for an hour. He doesn’t have an hour to wait though, so he says, “Were you ever going to tell me?” He sounds hurt even to his own ears, which is probably why Johnny’s head snaps up immediately.

“I thought I was being obvious and you didn’t want me back,” Johnny says quietly.

Taeil laughs incredulously. “Johnny. I thought you hated me half of the time, and were only being nice because we were coworkers and you had to be most of the rest of the time until very recently.”

Johnny groans and covers his face with one of his hands. “That’s what Jaehyun kept telling me. That you didn’t know. And that if I wanted you to know I needed to use my words.”

“Yeah?” Taeil asks, grinning. “And what else did Jaehyun say?”

“That I needed to stop flirting like a five year old boy and being sure that you’d realize that I was only being a dick because I didn’t know how to deal with how much I like you,” Johnny answers, sounding almost like he can’t believe what he’s saying.

Taeil reaches out and tugs Johnny’s hand away from his face. Almost without thinking, he intertwines their fingers and drops his hand to the bed, bringing Johnny’s hand down with him. “Sounds like you should have listened to him,” Taeil breathes out.

Johnny’s eyes are so, so full of hope. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Johnny squeezes Taeil’s hand. “Listen. You don’t have to say it back right now, or ever if you don’t want to. I understand that I said it kind of suddenly and at a really bad time and you’re on a lot of drugs right now – honestly, maybe you shouldn’t say it back now, even if _do_ you feel that way –”

“Johnny,” Taeil says, just to stop Johnny’s rambling. He closes his mouth with an audible click and gives Taeil an almost relieved look. “Johnny. Are you going to ask me out on a date, or what?”

Johnny’s eyes go wide. “Depends. Are you going to say yes?”

“I’m not going to answer that until you ask me,” Taeil says, but it’s teasing. He knows Johnny knows it, too, because his face lights up and he smiles so widely it seems to take up half of his face. “But please don’t ask when I’m in the hospital fresh out of surgery,” he warns quickly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Johnny replies, just as the door swings open once again.

“Whoa,” Taeil hears, followed by the distinctive sound of bodies crashing into one another. He looks over to see half of Dream in a heap on the floor, with the other half standing behind them staring into the room.

“Are we interrupting something?” Mark asks from his spot on the floor. If Taeil had to guess, he’d been the one who stopped in the doorway and then run over.

“Nah, come on in,” Taeil tells them. The ensuing mad scramble into the room is entertaining; he’s pretty sure Jisung leapt a good five feet into the air in his haste to get past the pile of his bandmates on the floor “How was the show?”

Donghyuck, who’s now staring at Taeil’s bed as if trying to figure out which side of his body is less injured, lifts his head to give Taeil an incredulous look. “We didn’t go on stage,” he says, “you and Tennie were both missing.”

“I didn’t wait ten minutes to tell anyone and I’m not sorry,” Jaemin adds, squaring his shoulders like he thinks Taeil might yell at him.

“I’m glad,” Taeil admits. “That probably saved both me and Ten.”

Jaemin puffs out his chest at that. “Oh. Okay. Good.”

Donghyuck, having apparently correctly deduced that Taeil’s right side is his less injured side (or having decided not to bother Johnny), climbs onto the hospital bed and presses himself against Taeil’s side. The movement jostles his hurt leg, and he can’t help but let out a soft hiss of pain.

“Donghyuck, you’re hurting him,” Chenle shouts.

“It’s fine,” Taeil assures them. The human contact will probably be good for him, he thinks, as Donghyuck reaches out to pet his hair gently.

“Oh, hey, did figure out how to deal with your emotions?” Jeno asks Johnny.

Johnny nods, looking at Jeno warily. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“You know you have you go through us if you want to be our Taeil’s boyfriend,” Renjun adds, sounding as menacing as he can. Which is very menacing, actually.

“Your Taeil?” Taeil echoes.

“Yes, Taeil, obviously,” Jisung says. The rest of Dream murmurs their agreement, and Taeil figures he can deal with that.

There’s just one thing that’s bothering him now, though –

“I can’t believe Doyoung let you guys out of his sight,” Taeil says, yawning. It’s been a long day, and he’s warm and as comfortable as he can be considering his location. It’s probably not a surprise that he’s getting sleepy again.

Mark chuckles awkwardly. “Um, yeah. About that,” he says. “He didn’t?”

The last thing Taeil hears before drifting back to sleep is a strangled yell that can only be Doyoung in the air. He only hopes that Doyoung won’t yell at the kids too loudly when he finds them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it! just the epilogue left now! (which should be up by the weekend!)
> 
> thank you to everyone who's made it this far, whether you've been here since chapter one or are just now discovering this fic of mine! writing it has been a joy, and i'm equal parts really, really excited and really, really sad that we're this close to the end now.
> 
> come say hi on either [twitter](https://twitter.com/zeromiles5) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/zeromiles5)!


	8. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's this? a pov switch? 
> 
> (yes)

Johnny wakes up with Taeil wrapped around him like a particularly clingy koala. It’s happening more and more frequently these days (his own apartment is pretty much just a storage unit at this point) but he’s not used to it yet. He’s not sure he’ll ever be used to it, but he doesn’t mind.

Extracting himself from Taeil’s clutches has gotten easier over time, however, and Johnny’s able to slip out of bed and tiptoe into the kitchen without Taeil even stirring. He’d “accidentally” left his phone charging on the kitchen counter the night before, knowing he’d wake up before Taeil, and he has thirteen unread messages even though it’s barely past 9am on a Saturday.

Most of them have a similar sentiment – _don’t forget!_ or _don’t tell!_ – but the most recent one, sent ten minutes before from Mark, says _are you seriously not awake yet_ and Johnny can’t help but shake his head at that.

 _Yes, we’re old and we sleep in on Saturdays_ , Johnny texts back before setting his phone aside and opening up Taeil’s refrigerator in search of eggs. He’s pretty sure there should be enough left for breakfast.

By the time he emerges victorious with a half-full carton of eggs in his hands, so many new texts are coming through to his phone that he’s genuinely concerned that it’s going to vibrate straight off the counter. He sets the eggs aside just to make sure that it’s not an emergency, only to find that Mark must have told the rest of Dream that he was awake and had replied to Mark’s most recent text or something because the kids are seemingly blowing up his phone just for the hell of it.

And sure, Johnny’s gotten really fond of them over the last six months or so, especially since they stopped glaring at him all of the time, but right now he really understands what Jaehyun means when he says that dating Doyoung sometimes is like dating a single mother of seven teenagers.

Making breakfast in Taeil’s kitchen is just as familiar to him as making breakfast in the kitchen of his own apartment, so it’s quick work once Johnny finally convinces the kids that no, he won’t forget what’s happening this afternoon, but he needs to be left alone so that they won’t be late.

Waking Taeil up is next. Johnny still doesn’t like to do it because Taeil looks so peaceful when he’s asleep, but oftentimes he’s left with no choice on the weekends. Today he lays down next to Taeil on top of the blankets and sticks his cold nose into the juncture of Taeil’s neck and shoulder, knowing that will undoubtedly wake him up.

Sure enough, Taeil jolts awake forcefully enough that Johnny has to duck his head to keep himself from being headbutted (it’s happened before, and it hurt like a bitch). He’s visibly annoyed at first, but his expression softens immediately when he sees Johnny. It makes him feel warm and fuzzy inside, the way that Taeil looks at him even when he knows Johnny’s looking these days.

But Taeil is Taeil, and that’s why he pretends to be annoyed still even when Johnny knows he’s not. “Go away,” he slurs sleepily, pouting a little.

Johnny leans up to plant a soft kiss on Taeil’s jutting bottom lip, then pulls away as quickly as he had leaned in.

“Wait, no, come back,” Taeil whines.

“I thought you wanted me to go away,” Johnny teases.

“I changed my mind,” Taeil says sulkily, sitting up. The blankets that had been pulled taut around his shoulders slip to pool around his waist and Johnny can’t help but watch them fall, his gaze lingering on the newly exposed bare skin for a heartbeat too long. When he finally looks away, finally meets Taeil’s gaze again, Taeil is smirking and reaching up to thumb at one of the bruises Johnny had left on him the night before. Shit.

The situation is quickly spinning out of Johnny’s control, and he knows he has to act fast. So he stands up, and takes a step back from the bed. “We don’t have time right now,” he says apologetically. “We have things to do, places to go, people to see.”

Taeil raises an eyebrow at him. “You mean _you_ have plans today,” he says, crossing his arms like a child. God, he’s been spending too much time with Dream lately. Not that Johnny would ever tell him that, or the kids that, because he values both being alive and having a boyfriend whom he loves very much. It’s also that very healthy fear of death that has prevented him from telling Taeil about their afternoon plans, as he knows the kids would not accept _but I love him and don’t want to keep secrets from him_ as an excuse.

(Johnny knows this because he’d tried it weeks ago, when the idea was first proposed to him. He’d gotten a very flat _it’s literally your job to keep secrets_ , courtesy of Jisung, in reply.)

After a quick mental rundown of his options, Johnny decides distraction is his best bet. “But babe,” he says, whining exaggeratedly, “we’re _partners_. Don’t make me go alone,” he adds, dragging out the last syllable. He cheers inwardly as he sees the corners of Taeil’s lips twitch.

“We’re not partners anymore,” he reminds Johnny gently.

They’d been lucky that the agency doesn’t have a strict no fraternization policy (although if they had, Johnny would have gladly transferred; he had told Taeyong as such, but luckily there was no reason to ever mention that fact to Taeil who would have fought him tooth and nail). However, they’d been told they would no longer be allowed to work as partners once Taeil was eventually cleared to go back into the field. Johnny’s used to it now, having worked with Jaehyun most of the time over the last five months after his arm healed, but he suspects Taeil’s still trying to come to terms with it since he’s only been cleared for field work for a week now. He and Yuta will be a formidable team, though. Johnny’s sure of it.

“But we’re _partners in life_ , which is so much better,” Johnny sings, and is rewarded by the helpless grin that breaks out across Taeil’s face. “Come on, babe. I made you breakfast.”

Taeil hums. “I’m listening.”

Johnny knows at this point he’s got Taeil convinced to get out of bed, but a little more incentive can’t hurt, right? “The sooner you get out of bed, the sooner we’ll be done eating and we’ll have more time to take a shower together.”

“Sold,” Taeil says immediately, shoving the blankets off his lap. “Lead the way.”

 

***

 

It’s an unseasonably warm day for December, and Taeil’s apartment is within walking distance to Dream’s building downtown. Johnny still gets a thrill out of holding Taeil’s hand, even after everything they’ve done to and with each other at this point, so he suggests walking to their, ahem, _secret destination_. Taeil gives him a suspicious look, but agrees pretty damn quickly.

Johnny knows it’s because Taeil likes holding his hand, too.

“Can I at least get a hint?” Taeil asks shortly after they leave.

Johnny laughs loud enough that several passersby glare at him. Not that he cares. “Absolutely not,” he says firmly. “You would figure it out immediately if I did, because you’re you.” He glances down at Taeil just in time to see him scowl, and that’s probably why he says, “But if you can guess it without any hints whatsoever, I’ll tell you if you’re right.”

Taeil’s eyes go wide. “We’re going to help Jaehyun organize a flash mob to propose to Doyoung,” he says immediately. The thought is so horrifying that Johnny nearly stops in his tracks; only the knowledge that they’d potentially get crushed by the crowds of people on the sidewalks keep him from doing so. “Ha! I’m right?” Taeil asks, clearly taking Johnny’s silence as confirmation.

“God, no,” Johnny says, grimacing. “Thank god. Doyoung would hate something like that, can you imagine? What even made you think of that? This way,” he adds, steering them towards the left at an intersection.

“First of all, that’s absolutely something Jaehyun would do,” Taeil says defensively.

“No argument here,” Johnny agrees, making a mental note to warn Jaehyun against doing exactly that one day.

“And you’ve been sneaking off to make phone calls all week. Jae’s the only person you ever talk to on the phone besides me and your parents, and you don’t leave the room when your mom calls.”

Shit. The kids have been calling Johnny because they’ve been convinced that Johnny would leave his phone laying around unsupervised and Taeil would see their texts to him (and they weren’t wrong), but he hadn’t realized just how often he’d slipped away from Taeil to answer his ringing phone over the past few days.

“I should have known you’d notice that,” Johnny winces. “Sorry.”

Taeil smiles up at him. “Don’t be, unless you have a reason to be. By the way, we need to cross the street and then make a right at the next light,” he adds, because of course he’s figured out where they’re going.

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“You’re a bad liar, but I love you,” Taeil says, laughing quietly.

Johnny beams, just like he has every other time Taeil’s told him he loves him in the last five and a half months since he said it for the first time. “I love you too,” he replies, and allows Taeil to pull him across the street when they come up on the next light.

“I’m so surprised,” Taeil says dryly ten minutes later, when Johnny brings them to a stop in front of Dream’s building.

Johnny leans down and kisses the tip of Taeil’s nose. It might be warm for December, but it’s still kind of chilly. Chilly enough that Taeil’s nose and cheeks have gone cherry red, and he can’t help himself. “I knew I should have blindfolded you,” he muses.

“Later,” Taeil promises with a wicked grin, and Johnny loves him so much it hurts.

“Oh, ew, stop,” Yukhei shrieks from where he’s standing directly in front of the doors. Johnny hadn’t noticed him, and judging by how Taeil jumps, he hadn’t either. “I’m supposed to actually blindfold you, but now I don’t wanna.”

“You big baby,” Taeil says fondly, letting go of Johnny’s hand to step towards Yukhei. “I’ll blindfold myself because I know you don’t want to let Johnny do it.”

“Absolutely not,” Yukhei agrees. If his eyes got any wider, his eyes would probably pop right out of their socket.

Johnny watches Taeil take the blindfold from Yukhei with an eyeroll before making quick work of wrapping it around his head and knotting behind himself. Johnny would be lying if he said it wasn’t hot.

“Control yourself,” Yukhei hisses, sounding completely scandalized. Johnny must not have controlled his face as well as he thought he had. Whoops.

The elevator ride up to Dream’s practice room is silent. Yuhkei spends the entire time shooting suspicious glances in Johnny’s direction, like he thinks he’s going to forget himself and rip Taeil’s clothes off in public. Part of Johnny wants to pat him on the head and reassure him that neither he or Taeil are into exhibitionism, but he has a feeling that that would only serve to scar poor Yukhei even further.

“Make sure you act surprised,” Johnny warns Taeil quietly as Yukhei leads them down the hallway to Dream’s practice studio. The kids would be crushed if they had any inkling that Taeil had figured any part of this out.

Taeil snorts. “I only know where we are,” he whispers back just before Yukhei herds him away from Johnny and into the darkened room. Yukhei tugs Taeil’s blindfold off, switches on the lights, and the room erupts into a solid wall of noise. A quick scan of the room tells him that their entire office is there, in addition to Ten and Doyoung, and the shocked yet pleased expression on Taeil’s face is so good that Johnny can’t even bring himself to be annoyed that one of the kids nailed him right between the eyes with a can of silly string.

“What’s this all about?” Taeil shouts, sounding absolutely delighted.

“Doyoungie told us that you were cleared to go back to work so we wanted to celebrate,” Chenle says, scrambling past the rest of his bandmembers so he can stand in front of Taeil. “So we got Johnny’s number out of Jae–”

Taeyong clears his throat. “I feel like I should mention that it could potentially be a crime for a civilian to obtain unauthorized information from a government law enforcement official’s personal communication device,” he says dryly. He’s clearly fighting back a smile though, just as amused by the kids’ antics as Johnny himself is.

“Um,” Chenle says weakly, turning around and looking at the rest of his bandmembers in a clear plea for help.

“We got Johnny’s number and asked him to help us organize this for you,” Jaemin cuts in smoothly, running towards Taeil and wrapping him in a bear hug.

“You didn’t have to,” Taeil says, sounding obviously choked up. Johnny’s fingers twitch with the desire to pull Taeil to him and soothe the tears, even if they are happy tears, but he hangs back and allows Dream to coddle the love of his life instead. He knows Taeil’s in good hands.

“Yes, we had to,” Mark’s saying when Johnny steps away from the scene in the doorway and crosses the room to where Taeyong’s standing with Ten and Kun. Ten’s got his hand wrapped around Kun’s waist, and they both look blissfully happy. Johnny figures that’s how he looks when he’s with Taeil, too.

“Go easy on him, the last thing we need is you guys hurting him again,” Doyoung warns. The latter half of his sentence is almost drowned out by Jaehyun’s laughter.

“He’s tougher than he looks!” Jungwoo tells Doyoung, patting him on the back consolingly. “Let the kids have their fun.”

“You look happy,” Taeyong says to Johnny after a moment.

Johnny smiles as he leans back against the wall next to Taeyong and watches Renjun free Taeil from Jaemin’s clutches. “Yeah,” he says, grinning when Taeil catches his eye amidst the chaos and smiles at him. “I really, really am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap! thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to everyone who's read this, and i hope that the (really, really) soft ending did not disappoint!
> 
> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zeromiles5) or come say hi on [cc](https://curiouscat.me/zeromiles5)! i'm not sure what i'll be writing next, but i definitely plan on writing more for this fandom! until next time!


End file.
